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From the Library of 
Professor Henry F. Wickham 
University of Iowa 
Presented in 1942 


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AN 


INTRODUCTION 


Ey LOMO G Y 5. 


THE NATURAL HISTORY OF INSECTS: 


COMPRISING 


AN ACCOUNT OF NOXIOUS AND USEFUL INSECTS, 


OF THEIR METAMORPHOSES, FOOD, STRATAGEMS, HABITATIONS, SOCIETIES, MOTIONS, 
NOISES, HYBERNATION, INSTINCT, ETC. ETC. 


With Plates. 


BY 
WILLIAM KIRBY, M.A. F.R.S. & LS. 
RECTOR OF BARHAM, 


AND 


WILLIAM SPENCE, Esa. F.R.S. & LS. 


FROM THE 


SIXTH LONDON EDITION, 


WHICH WAS CORRECTED AND CONSIDERABLY ENLARGED. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
LEA AND BLANCHARD. 
1846. 


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ADVERTISEMENT 


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TO 


THIS SIXTH EDITION. 


Wuen the present work was originally published, the Authors 
had no expectation that the demand for it would be so exten- 
sive and permanent as it has proved; and they need not say 
how gratifying this unlooked-for result has been to their feelings, 
as realizing their earnest hope of assisting to remove the preju- 
dices against the study of Entomology, which existed in full 
force thirty years ago when they took up the subject, but which 
have now happily disappeared. 

Though, however, a regular annual demand for a certain 
number of copies has always continued up to the present time, 
so as to have exhausted the last edition, the publishers have 
suggested that the future sale of the work, and its main object 
—that of extending the knowledge of insects—would be much 
forwarded, if the first two volumes, treating of their manners 
and economy, were published separately, so as to obviate the 
necessity to those who do not care to pursue the study farther, 
of being burdened with the heavy cost of two additional volumes 
of matter, chiefly technical, in which they feel no interest. 

It is in compliance with this suggestion that these volumes 
now appear as a distinct work, and (though greatly enlarged 
by new matter) at a considerable reduction of price; but at 
the same time it is hoped that a new edition of the two 
remaining volumes will follow at a future period, when they 
will be also given as a distinct work, comprising the anatomy, 
physiology, orismology, &c. of the science. 


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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


http://www.archive.org/details/introductiontoenOOOkirb 


PREFACE 


TO 


THE FIRST EDITION, 1815. 


One principal cause of the little attention paid to Entomology in this 
country has doubtless been the ridicule so often thrown upon the science. 
The botanist, sheltered now by the sanction of fashion, as formerly by 
the prescriptive union of his study with medicine, may dedicate his hours 
to mosses and lichens without reproach ; but in the minds of most men, 
the learned as well as the vulgar, the idea of the trifling nature of his 
pursuit is so strongly associated with that of the diminutive size of its 
objects, that an Entomologist is synonymous with every thing futile and 
childish. Now, when so many other roads to fame and distinction are 
open, when a man has merely to avow himself a botanist, a mineralogist, 
or a chemist, a student of classical literature, or of political economy, to 
insure attention and respect, there are evidently no great attractions to 
lead him to a science which, in nine companies out of ten with which he 
may associate, promises to signalize him only as an object of pity or con- 
tempt. Even if he have no other aim than self-gratification, yet “the 
sternest stoic of us all wishes at least for some one to enter into his views 
and feelings, and confirm him in the opinion which he entertains of him- 
self:”? but how can he look for sympathy in a pursuit unknown to the 
world, except as indicative of littleness of mind ? 

Yet such are the genuine charms of this branch of the study of nature, 
that here as well as on the Continent, where, from being equally slighted, 
Entomology now divides the empire with her sister Botany, this obstacle 
would not have been sufficient to deter numbers from the study, had not 
another more powerful impediment existed,—the want of a popular and 
comprehensive Introduction to the science. While elementary books on 
Botany have been multiplied amongst us without end and in every shape, 
Curtis’s translation of the Fundamenta Entomologia, published in 1772, 

1* 


vi PREFACE. 


Yeats’s Institutions of Entomology, which appeared the year after, and 
Barbut’s Genera Insectorum, which came out in 1781 the two former 
in too unattractive, and the latter in too expensive a form for general 
readers,—are the only works professedly devoted to this object which the 
English language can boast. 

Convinced that this was the chief obstacle to the spread of Ento- 
mology in Britain, the authors of the present work resolved to do what was 
in their power to remove it, and to introduce their countrymen to a mine 
of pleasure, new, boundless, and inexhaustible, and which, to judge from 
their own experience,—formed in no contracted field of comparison,— 
they can recommend as possessing advantages and attractions equal to 
those held forth by most other branches of human learning. 

The next question was, in what way they should attempt to accomplish 
this intention. If they had contented themselves with the first suggestion 
that presented itself, and merely given a translation of one of the many 
Introductions to Entomology extant in Latin, German, and French, add- 
ing only a few obvious improvements, their task would have been very 
easy ; but the slightest examination showed that, in thus proceeding, they 
would have stopped far short of the goal which they were desirous of 
reaching. In the technical department of the science they found much 
confusion, and numerous errors and imperfections ; the same name some- 
times applied to parts anatomically quite different, and different names to 
parts essentially the same, while others of primary importance were with- 
out any name at all. And with reference to the anatomy and physiology 
of insects, they could no where meet with a full and accurate generaliza- 
tion of the various facts connected with these subjects, scattered here and 
there in the pages of the authors who have studied them. 

They therefore resolved to begin, in some measure, de novo, to institute 
a rigorous revision of the terms employed, making such additions and 
improvements as might seem to be called for; and to attempt a more 
complete and collected account of the existing discoveries respecting the 
anatomical and physiological departments of the science than has yet 
been given to the world ;—and to these two points their plan at the out- 
set was limited. 

It soon, however, occurred to them, that it would be of little use to 
write a book which no one would peruse; and that, in the present age 
of love for light reading, there could not be much hope of leading 
students to the dry abstractions of the science, unless they were conducted 
through the attractive portal of the economy and natural history of its 
objects. ‘To this department, therefore, they resolved to devote the first 


PREFACE. u 


and most considerable portion of their intended work, bringing into one 
point of view, under distinct heads, the most interesting discoveries of 
Reaumur, De Geer, Bonnet, Lyonet, the Hubers, &c., as well as their 
own individual observations, relative to the noxious and beneficial pro- 
perties of insects, their affection for their young, their food, and modes of 
obtaining it, their habitations, societies, &c. &c.; and they were the*more 
induced to adopt this plan from the consideration that, though many of 
the most striking of these facts have been before presented to the English 
reader, a great proportion are unknown to him ; and that no similar gene- 
ralization (if a slight attempt towards it in Smellie’s Philosophy of Natural 
History, and a confessedly imperfect one in Latreille’s Histoire Naturelle 
des Crustacés et des Insectes be excepted) has ever been attempted in any 
language. ‘Thus the entire work would be strictly on the plan of the 
Philosophia Entomologica of Fabricius, only giving a much greater extent 
to the @conomia and Usus, and adverting to these in the first place’ 
instead of in the last. 

The epistolary form was adopted, not certainly from any idea of their 
style being particularly suited to a mode of writing so difficult to keep 
from running into incongruities, but simply because this form admitted 
of digressions and allusions called for in a popular work, but which might 
have seemed misplaced in a stricter kind of composition ;—because it is 
better suited to convey those practical directions which in some branches 
of the pursuit the student requires ;—and, lastly, because by this form 
the objection against speaking of the manners and economy of insects 
before entering upon the definition of them, and explaining the terms of 
the science,—a retrograde course, which they have chosen from their 
desire to present the most alluring side of the science first,—is, in great 
measure, if not wholly, obviated. 

Such is the plan which the authors chalked out for themselves; a plan 
which in the execution they have found so much more extensive than 
they calculated upon, that, could they have foreseen the piles of volumes 
through which it has entailed upon them the labor of wading, often to 
glean scarcely more than a single fact, the numerous anatomical and tech- 
nological investigations which it has called for, and the long correspond- 
ence, almost as bulky as the entire work, unavoidably rendered necessary 
by the distant residence of the parties, they would have shrunk from an 
undertaking of which the profit, if by great chance there should be any, 
could not be expected to repay even the cost of books required in it, and 
from which any fame must necessarily be confined to a very limited circle. 
But having entered upon it, they have persevered ; and if they succeed 


siti PREFACE. 


in their grand aim, that of making converts amongst their countrymen to 
a study equally calculated for promoting the glory of Gof and the delight 
and profit of man, they will not deem the labor of the leisure hours of six 
years ill bestowed. 

And here it may be proper to observe, that one of their first and favor- 
ite objects has been to direct the attention of their readers “ from nature 
up to nature’s God.” For, when they reflected upon the fatal use which 
has too often been made of Natural History, and that from the very 
works and wonders of God some philosophists, by an unaccountable per- 
version of intellect, have attempted to derive arguments either against his 

_being and providence, or against the religion revealed in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, they conceived they might render some service to the most important 
interests of mankind, by showing how every department of the science 
they recommend illustrates the great truths of religion, and proves that 
the doctrines of the Word of God, instead of being contradicted, are 
triumphantly confirmed by his Works. 

“ To see all things in God,” has been accounted one of the peculiar 
privileges of a future state ; and in this present life, “ to see God in all 
things,” in the mirror of the creation to behold and adore the reflected 
glory of the Creator, is no mean attainment; aud it possesses this advan- 
tage, that thus we sanctify our pursuits, and, instead of loving the crea- 
tures for themselves, are led by the survey of them and their instincts to 
the love of Him who made and endowed them. 

Of their performance of the first part of their plan, in which there is 
the least room for originality, it is only necessary for the authors to say, 
that they have done their best to make it as comprehensive, as interesting, 
and as useful as possible: but it is requisite to enter somewhat more fully 
into what has been attempted in the anatomical, physiological, and tech- 
nical parts of the work. 

As far as respects the general physiology and internal anatomy of 
insects, they have done little more than bring together and combine the 
observations of the naturalists who have attended to these branches of 
the science; but the external anatomy they have examined for themselves 
through the whole class, and, they trust, not without some new light being 
thrown upon the subject ; particularly by pointing out and giving names 
to many parts never before noticed. 

In the Terminology, or what, to avoid the barbarism of a word com- 
pounded of Latin and Greek, they would beg to call the Orismology of 
the science, they have endeavored to introduce throughout a greater degree 
of precision and concinnity, dividing it into general and partial Oris- 


PREFACE. ‘2 


mology ; under the former head, defining such terms as relate to Substance, 
Resistance, Density, Proportion, Figure, Form, Superficies (under which 
are introduced Sculpture, Clothing, Color, &c.), Margin, Termination, 
Incision, Ramification, Division, Direction, Situation, Connection, Arms, 
&c.; and under the latter, those that relate to the body and its parts and 
members, considered in its great subdivisions of Head, Trunky and 
Abdomen. In short, they may rest their claim of at least aiming at con- 
siderable improvement in this department upon the great number of new 
terms, and alterations of old ones, which they have introduced,—in 
external Anatomy alone falling little short of 150. If it should be 
thought by any one that they have made too many changes, they would 
remind him of the advice of Bergman to Morveau, when reforming the 
nomenclature of Chemistry, the soundness of which Dugald Stewart has 
recognized :—“ Ne faites grace a aucune dénomination impropre. Ceux 
qui savent déja, entendront towours ; ceux qui ne savent pas encore, enten- 
dront plutét.” 

Throughout the whole publication, wherever any fact of importance 
not depending on their own authority is mentioned, a reference to the 
source whence it has been derived is generally given; so that, if the work 
should have no other value, it will possess that of saving much trouble to 
future inquirers, by serving as an index to direct them in their researches. 

The Authors are perfectly sensible that, notwithstanding all their care 
and pains, many imperfections will unavoidably remain in their work. 
There is no science to which the adage, Dies diem docet, is more strikingly 
applicable than to Natural History. New discoveries are daily made, and 
will be made, it is probable, to the end of time; so that whoever flatters 
himself that he can produce a perfect work in this department will be 
miserably disappointed. ‘The utmost that can reasonably be expected 
from naturalists, is to keep pace with the progress of knowledge ; and this 
the authors have used their best diligence to accomplish. Every new year 
since they took the subject in hand, up to the very time when the first 
sheets were sent to the press, numerous corrections and alterations have 
suggested themselves ; and thus they are persuaded it would be were they 
to double the period of delay prescribed by Horace. But Poetry and 
Natural History are on a different footing ; and though an author can plead 
little excuse for giving his verses to the world while he sees it possible to 
polish them to higher excellence, the naturalist, if he wishes to promote 
the extension of his science, must be content to submit his performances 
to the public disfigured by numerous imperfections. 

In the introductory letter several of the advantages to be derived from 


= PREFACE. 


the study of Entomology are pointed out; but there is one which, though 
it could not well have been insisted upon in that placejis too important to 
be passed over without notice,—its value in the education of youth. 

All modern writers on this momentous subject unite in recommending 
in this view Natural History; and if “the quality of accurate discrimi- 
nation, the ready perception of resemblances amongst diversities, and 
still more, the quick and accurate perception of diversity in the midst of 
resemblances, constitutes one of the most important operations of the 
understanding ; if it be indeed the foundation of clear ideas, and the 
acquisition of whatever can be truly called knowledge depends most ma- 
terially on the possession of it;” if “‘ the best logic be that which teaches 
us to suspend our judgments ;” and “the art of seeing, so useful, so 
universal, and yet so uncommon, be one of the most valuable a man can 
possess,’ there can be no doubt of the judiciousness of their advice. 
Now of all the branches of Natural History, Entomology is unquestiona- 
bly the best fitted for thus disciplining the mind of youth; and simply 
from these circumstances, that its objects have life, are gifted with sur- 
prising instincts admirably calculated to attract youthful attention, and 
are to be met with every where. It is not meant to undervalue the good 
effects of the study of Botany or Mineralogy ; but it is self-evident that 
nothing inanimate can excite such interest in the mind of a young per- 
son as beings endowed with vitality, exercising their powers and faculties 
in so singular a way; which, as Reaumur observes, are not only alive 
themselves, but confer animation upon the leaves, fruits, and flowers that 
they inhabit, which every walk offers to view, and on which new obser- 
vations may be made without end. . 

Besides these advantages, no study affords a fairer opportunity of lead- 
ing the young mind by a natural and pleasing path to the great truths of 
Religion, and of impressing it with the most lively ideas of the power, 
wisdom, and goodness of the Creator. 

Not that it is recommended to make children collectors of insects ; nor 
that young people, to the neglect of more important duties and pursuits, 
should generally become professed Entomologists ; but, if the former be 
familiarized with their names, manners, and economy, and the latter 
initiated into their classification, it will be an excellent method of strength- 
ening their habits of observation, attention, and memory, equal perhaps, 
in this respect, to any other mental exercise ; and then, like Major Gyl- 
lenhal, who studied Entomology under Thunberg about 1770, and after 
an interval of twenty years devoted to the service of his country, resumed 
his favorite pursuit with all the ardor of youth, and is at this time giving 


PREFACE. x 


to the world a description of the insects of Sweden, invaluable for its 
accuracy and completeness, they would be provided in their old age with 
an object capable not merely of keeping off that tediwm vite so often 
inseparable from the relinquishment of active life, but of supplying an 
unfailing fund of innocent amusement, an incentive to exercise, and, con- 
sequently, no mean degree of health and enjoyment. : 
Some, who, with an ingenious author*, regard as superfluous all pains 
to show the utility of Natural History in reference to the common purposes 
of life, asking, “if it be not enough to open a source of copious and 
cheap amusement, which tends to harmonize the mind, and elevate it to 
worthy conceptions of nature and its Author?—if a greater blessing to 
a man can be offered than happiness at an easy rate, unalloyed by any 
debasing mixture ?”’ may think ‘the earnestness displayed on this head, 
and the length which has been gone in refuting objections, needless. But 
Entomology is so peculiarly circumstanced, that, without removing these 
obstacles, there could be no hope of winning votaries to the pursuit. 
Pliny felt the necessity of following this course in the outset of his book 
which treats on insects; and a similar one has been originally called for 
in introducing the study even to those countries where the science is now 
most honored. In France, Reaumur, in each of the successive volumes 
of his immortal work, found it essential to seize every opportunity of 
showing that the study of insects is not a frivolous amusement, nor devoid 
of utility, as his countrymen conceived it; and in Germany, Sulzer had 
to traverse the same road, telling us, in proof of the necessity of this 
procedure, that on showing his works on insects with their plates to two 
very sensible men, one commended him for employing his leisure hours 
in preparing prints that would amuse children and keep them out of 
mischief, and the other admitted that they might furnish very pretty 
patterns for ladies’ aprons! And though in this country things are not 
quite so bad as they were when Lady Glanville’s will was attempted to be 
set aside on the ground of lunacy, evinced by no other act than her fond- 
ness for collecting insects; and Ray had to appear at Exeter on the 
trial as a witness of her sanity}; yet nothing less than line upon line can 
be expected to eradicate the deep-rooted prejudices which prevail on this 
subject. ‘Old impressions,” as Reaumur has well observed, “ are with 
difficulty effaced. They are weakened, they appear unjust even to 
those who feel them, at the moment they are attacked by arguments 


* Dr. Aikin. 
¢ See Harris’s Aurelian under Papilio Cinzia. 


xi PREFACE. 


which are unanswerable; but the next instant the proofs are forgotten, 
and the perverse association resumes its empire.” ° 

The Authors do not know that any curiosity will be excited to ascer- 
tain what share has been contributed to the work by each of them; but 
if there should, it is a curiosity they must be excused from gratifying. 
United in the bonds of a friendship, which, though they have to thank 
Entomology for giving birth to it, is founded upon a more solid basis than 
mere community of scientific pursuits, they wish that, whether blame or 
praise is the fate of their labors, it may be jointly awarded. All that 
they think necessary to state is, that the composition of each of the dif- 
ferent departments of the work has been, as nearly as possible, divided 
between them; that though the letter, or series of letters, on any particu- 
lar subject, has been usually undertaken by one, some of the facts and 
illustrations have generally been supplied by the other, and there are a few 
to which they have jointly contributed; and that, throughout, the facts 
for which no other authority is quoted, are to be considered as resting upon 
that of one or other of the authors, but not always of him, who, from 
local allusions, may be conceived the writer of the letter in which they 
are introduced, as the matter furnished by each to the letters of the other 
must necessarily be given in the person of the supposed writer. 

In acknowledging their obligations to their friends, the first place is due 
to Simon Wixxin, Esq. of Costessey near Norwich, to whose liberality 
they are indebted for the plates which illustrate and adorn the work, 
which have been drawn and engraved at his expense by Mr. Joun Curtis, 
whose intimate acquaintance with the subject has enabled him to give to 
the figures an accuracy which they could not have received from one less 
conversant with the science.* 

To Avexanper MacLeay, Esq. they are under particular obligations, 
for the warm interest he has all along taken in the work, the judicious 
advice he has on many occasions given, the free access in which he has 
indulged the authors to his unrivaled cabinet and well stored library, and 
the numerous other attentions and accommodations by which he has mate- 
rially assisted them in its progress. 

To the other friends who have kindly aided them in this undertaking 
in any way, they beg here to offer their best thanks. 


* This refers to the year 1815, when the first volume of this work was published. In the 
twenty-seven years since elapsed, Mr. Curtis’s Entomological labors, and especially his 
British Entomology in sixteen volumes, equally admirable for its scientific and artistical 
excellence, have deservedly gained him a very high reputation wherever the science is 
cultivated. 


CONTENTS. 


LETTER I. 
Page 

‘INTRODUCTORY - - - - - - 37—46 

LETTER II. 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED ~ eet T. - - 47-—~-66 
That Entomology is a trifling-pursuit - - - - 47 
That Entomologists confine themselves chiefly to nomenclature - 57 
That it leads to cruelty - . - - - 64 

LETTER III. 

Meramorpuoses or Insects - - - - - 67—77 
States of Insects (egg, larva, &c.) - - - - 69 
(Orders of Insects) - - - - ~ 70 
Theory of Metamorphoses - - - - - 71 
Object of Metamorphoses - - - - - 76 

LETTER IV. 

Direct Insurres causep By Insects (arrecTinc MAN PERSONALLY) - 78—112 

1. Insects which make man their food - - - - 79—99 
Pediculus humanus, &c. - - - - 79 
Acari - - - = a s 82 
Larve - - - - . - 87 
Fleas - - - - - - 88 
Chigoes - - - - - 89 
Harvest Bugs, Ticks, &e. - - - - 90 
Bed Bugs, &c. - - - - 91 
(Insects giving an Biectxical shock) - ~ - 92 
Horse Flies, &c. - - - - - 93 
Mosquitoes, &c. ~ - - - - 94 

2. Insects which attack man from revenge or fear - - - 99—103 
Bees, Wasps, &c. - - - - - 99 
Ants - - s - - - 100 

‘ Scorpions - : - : - 101 

z * - - 102 


Centipedes, Tarentula, &o. 
2 


ee ‘ CONTENTS. 


a. = Page 
3. Insects simply annoying toman* = - é - 103—107 
Thrips, Sumilium, &e. - - - - 103 
House Fly - - = - - a 104 
Hairy Caternitlant *&c. - 2 - & = a 105 
4. Insects producing internal —— - - = = 107112 
Beetles ~ - - - = - - 107 
Caterpillars - - - - - - 107 
Gad-flies, &c. - - = = = 108 
Bees collecting poisonous honey - - - - 112 
LETTER V. 
Invirect [NsuRIES cAUSED BY INSECTS’ - - - - 113—124 
1. Injuries to our living animal property - - - 113—124 
To the Horse - - - - - 113 
Ox - - - - - 115 
Sheep - - - - - 119 
Deer - - - - - - 120 
Dog - 2 - : y . 122 
Hive Bee, &c. - - e " 122 
LETTER VI. 
Invirect Insur1Es—continued - = = - 125—159 
2. Injuries to our living ve a roperty, . - . 125 
To Field Crops ied stb: . - - - 125—139 
Wheat - - - - - - 125 
Wheat, &c., in granaries - - - - 128 
Rye, Barley - - - . - 129 
Indian Corn, &c.  - - - - . 130 
Peas, Beans, &c. - - - - - 130 
Clover Seed - : - - . 132 
Pastures and Meadows - - - - 132 
Crops generally = - - - - - 133 
Hops - - - - - - 135 
Sugar - - - - - 135 
Cotton, Tobacco, and Coffee - - - - 137 
Carrots - - - - - - 137 
Potatoes - - - - - 138 
Turnips - - - . - - 138 
Beet - - - - - - 139 
To Garden Crops - - - - - 139—151 
Kitchen Garden - - - - - 139—142 
Radishes, Lettuces, &c. - - - - 139 
Cabbages, Cauliflowers, &c.  - - . - 140 
Peas, Beans, Carrots, &c. - - . - 141 
Flower Garden . - - - - 142 
Stove and Greenhouse . - - . 143 
To Orchard and Weuitery - - - - 143—151 
Raspberries - - - - 144 
Gooseberries and Corradi - - . - 144 
Cherries - - - - - - 145 
Plums - - - - - - 145 
Pears’ - - - - = - 145 
Apples - - - - - 146 
Peaches and Nebtarings - - - - 147 
Olives” - - - = - - 148 
Chestnuts and Dates - - - - 148 
S = - - 149 


Pomegranates and Oranges 


CONTENTS. 


2. Injuries to our living vegetable property—continued. 


Grapes - - 
Fruit trees generally 
To Plantations and Groves 
~ By Beetles - 
Caterpillars - 
Aphides (honey-dew) 
Insects attacking the interior of trees 
Insects attacking their bark and alburnum 


? 


ats LETTER VII. 


Inprrect Insur1es—continued ~ = 
The ravages of Locusts - - 2 


LETTER VIII. 


Inpirect Insur1tEs—concluded ~ & 


3. Injuries to our dead property, whether bon or Si: orale 


To our Food - 
Drugs - - - 
Clothes - - 
Houses and furniture - 
Timber - - 
Books, Pictures, &c. - 
Dead Stock generally - . 


LETTER IX. 
/ 


Iyprrect BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS -d 


By maintaining a due balance between vegetable and animal productions 


removing nuisances and deformities - ~ 
destroying noxious Insects - = 
serving as food for other animals” - - 
promoting the fertilization of plants - 


LETTER X. 


Drrect BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS - = 


As serving for the food of man - = 
As affording Medicines - - 
Dyes - 
Wax - . 
Honey - 
Silk - - - “ 


LETTER XI. 


AFFeEcTION oF INSECTS FoR THEIR YOUNG - 


1. Insects which perish before Sad a come into existence 


Butterflies - - 
Ichneumons 

Sand Wasps, &c. 
Wild Bees - 
Beetles - 


- 
- 


xv 


Page 


149 
150 
151 
151 
152 
153 
"154 
156 


160—166 
160—166 


167—178 
167—178 
167 
169 
170 
171 
171 
173 
174 


179—205 
180 
181 
185 
195 
203 


206—226 
206 
213 
215 
220 
221 
222 


227—250 
227—237 
227 
228 
230 
232 
233 


XVI : CONTENTS. 


Page 

2. Insects which attend their young when hatched - -* - 237—321 

Mason Wasp - - - - - 238 

Saw Fly - - - - - - 238 

Wood-boring Beetle - - - - - 238 

Field Bug - - - - - - 238 

Earwigs - - - - - ~ 239 

Spiders - - - - - - 239 

Ants - - - - - - 242 

Wasps - - - - - - 245 

Bees - - - - - - 247 

Humble Bees - - - - - 248 

Termites - - - - - - 249 
LETTER XII. 

Foop or Insects - - - - - - 251—261 

Insects which feed on vegetables - - - - 251 

animals - - - - 252 

both vegetables and animals - . 253 

‘Time of feeding - - - - - 256 

Instruments of nutrition - - - - - 257 

Proportion of food consumed - - - - 258 

Power of abstinence - - - - - 259 
LETTER XIII. 

Foop or Insecrs—continued - - - - - 262—279 

Stratagems employed in procuring tt - - - - 262—279 

“Threads of Spiders - - - - - 262 

Webs of House Spiders, &c.  - - - . 265 

Nets of Geometric Spiders - - - - 266 

Renewal of Geometric nets - - - - 272 

Other Spiders’ webs - - - - - ' 273 

Spiders which do not form webs or nets - - - 274 

Diving Spider - - - - - 275 

Ant Lion - - - - - . 276 

Leptis Vermileo - - - - - 279 
LETTER XIV. 

Wfapirations or Insects - - - - - 280—303 

1. Of solitary insects forming them eal their young - - 280—292 

Clothier Bees - - - - 282 

Carpenter Bees - - - - - 282 

Mason Bees - - - - - 283 

Upholsterer Bees - - - - - 285 

Leaf-cutting Bees - - - - - 285 

Mason Wasp - - - - - 287 

Leaf-rolling Weevils - - - - - 288 

Gall Flies - - - - - - 289 

2. Of solitary insects forming them for their own use - - 292—303 

In the interior of leaves - - . - 293 

Of leaves cut off and rolled up - - - - 293 

Silk - . - - - 295 

Lichen, Stone, &e. - - - - 296 

Grass, Bark, &e. (Psyche) - . - - 297 

Gummy cement (Clythra) - - - - 297 

Wax (Galleria) - = - 298 

Wool or Hair gd sean of Clothes moths) - - 298 

Cotton - - - 299 


CONTENTS. ‘<yil 


Page 
2. Of solitary insects forming es for their own use—continued. 
Grass, Rushes, Sand, &c. (Caddis-worms) - - 299 
Earth and Silk with a trap vere (Spidens) - - 301 
Air (diving Spider) - - 302 
LETTER XV. : 
Hasitations or Insects—continued  - - - - 304—324 
3. Of insects living in society - - . - 304—324 
Caterpillars - - - - - 304 
Ants - = = = - - 305 
Hive Bees - - - - - 308 
Humble Bees - - - - - 316 
Wasps’ - = - - - - 318 
Termites - - - - - - 321 
LETTER XVI. 
Socreties or Insects. 
1. Imperfect societies = “ - - - 325—338 
Associations for company - - - - 326 
of males ~ - Ne . 327 
for emigrating - - - - 328 
of Caterpillars - = - - 329 
Aphides - - - - 329 
Lady-birds - - - - 329 
Turnip Saw-flies - - - 330 
Dragon-flies - - - - 330 
Frog-hoppers = - - - - 330 
Beetles - - - - 331 
Butterflies - - - - 331 
Field Bugs - - - ~ 331 
Locusts - - - - 332 
for mutual assistance - - ~ 335 
Ateuchus pilularius = - - 335 
Caterpillars - - - - 336 
LETTER XVII. 
Societies or INsects—continued - - - - 339—382 
2. Perfect societies (White Ants and Ants) - - - 339—382 
White Ants. 
Individuals composing the society - - - 342 
Establishment of colonies - - - - 343 
Building and repairing habitations - - - 345 
Collecting food - - . 2 - 345 
Defence of habitations - - - - 346 
Termes lucifugus —- - = = 347 
Ants. 
Storing up food - - 5 : - 348 
(Gould’ s ** English Ants’’) - - . - 350 
Individuals composing the society = - 351 
Formation of new societies—W inged gaat : - 352 
Language - - - - - - 356 
Affections and aversions . - - - 359 


O* 


XViil 


Ants—continued. 
Formic acid 


Wars = 


Slave-making 


CONTENTS. 


Milch Cattle—Aphides, &c. § > 


Emigrations 


Working all night = - 
Roads and track- -ways 


Strength and perseverance = 
Bridge-making 


Repose and sleep = - 
Sports and games - 


LETTER XVIII. 


Perrect Societies or Insects—continued 


Wasps.—Humble Bees 


Wasps. 


Individuals composing the society 
Labors of workers = - 
Storing up honey - 
Sentinels - 
Humble Bees. 
Individuals composing the ogee 
Employment of females 


Small females 


Parasitic Humble Bees 
‘Temper and disposition 


LETTER XIX. 


Perrect Societies or INsects—continued 


ITve Bee 


Individuals composing the society 
Education of a new Queen 


Larve and pupe 


Queen Bee 
Combats of Queens - 
First swarm conducted by the old Queen 
Treatment of young Queens - 

Devotion to the Queen 


Loss of a Queen 


feo 


Fecundation of the Queen - 
Oviposition by the — 
Swarming - 


LETTER XX. 


Perrect Societies or Insects—concluded 


Hive Bee 


Drones 


Workers . 
collecting nectar 


pollen 
propolis 


Distance of excursions - 


Scouts 


Pe ea 


Voi 88 ak 


Page 
360 
361 
364 
370 
373 
377 

- 378 

- 380 

- 380 

- 381 

- 381 


- 383—390 
- 383—390 


- 383 
- 385 
- 385 
= 385 


- 386 
= 386 
~ 3838 
- 389 
- 389 


- 391—414 


- 391—414 
- 392 
= 395 
+ 400 
- 401 
i. 402 
- 403 
= 404 
= 406 
= 406 
= 408 
3 410 
: 410 


- 415—436 


_ 7 415—436 


415 
417 
418 
420 
422 
423 
423 


CONTENTS. aie 


Page 
Hive Bees—continued. 
Population of ahive _- - - ‘. = 424 
Transportation of hives - - - - 424 
Ventilation - - - e Ss ‘ 426 
Cleanliness - . - - . - 429 
Language - - - - - - 430 
Anger - - - - - - » 430 
Wars - - - - - - 432 
Enemies - - - ‘= - - 434 
Accidents - - = = 2 f 435 
Temperature of the hive - - = = 436 
Instincts not mere sensations - - = we 437 
; LETTER XX. 

MEANS BY WHicH INSECTS DEFEND THEMSELVES - a Ee - 439—465 

1. Passive. : 

By imitating various substances, objects, and colors - - 439. 
their brilliant colors - - - - 442 
frightful aspect, horns, &c.  - - ~ - 442 
spines, hairs, &c. - - - . - 443 
hardness and toughness - - - . 444 
involuntary offensive secretions - - - 444 
power of vitality - - - - - 445 
extraordinary multiplication - - . - 446 

2. Active. 

By rolling themselves into a ball - - ses 447 
simulating death - - - - - 447 
assuming various attitudes = - - - - 448 
motions to alarm or escape their enemies - - - 450 
noises - ~ - - - 451 
disgusting and powerful scents - - - 451 
scent-organs - - - - - 453 
explosive discharges - . - - 454 
emission of repulsive fluids - - - - 454 
their weapons of defence - - - - 457 
concealing themselves - - - - 459 
feeding only by night - - - - 463 
especial modes of defence - = - 464 

LETTER XXII. 
Motions or Insects. 
Larva and Pupa - - “ - - 466—481 
> 
1. Of Larve. 
Destitute of proper legs - - - - 467 
Provided with proper legs = a = - 474 
Residing in water - “ - - = 477 
2. Of Pupe - - - - - - 478 
LETTER XXIII. 
Motions or Insects—continued. 
- - 481—518 


Imago - ~ r. a 
1. While in repose “ - - - - 481 


xX 


2. While in action 


Walking - : 
Running - a 
Jumping, - 
Climbing - 
‘Flying - 


without wings (Spiders) 


with wings 
Beetles 
EKarwigs 
Stylops, &e. 


Grasshoppers, &c. 
Field Bugs, &c. 


May-flies, &c. 


Butterflies and Moths 
Bees, Wasps, &c. 


Flies, &c. 
Swimming - 


Walking in or on water 


Burrowing - 
Hovering - 
Gyrations - 
Dancing - 


NoIsES PRODUCED BY INSECTS 


While in motion - 
While feeding, &c. 


CONTENTS. 


ie eed os Meal fee [AM Yate! Rl ee Vl) peed om lll Cough QU 


LETTER XXIV. 


In calling, commanding, or giving an alarm 
As expressive of fear, anger, sorrow, love, &c. 


By Beetles - 
Field Bugs 
Moths - 
Bees, &c. 
Grasshopper tribe 
Crickets 
Locusts, &c. 
Cicade, &c. 


Luminous Insects 


Glow-worms - 
Fire-flies = 
Other luminous Beetles 
Lantern-flies - 
Other luminous insects 


Source of their luminous propery 


Its remote cause - 
Its use - 


Hyeernation or Insects 


In the egg state 
upa state 
arva state 

perfect state 


LETTER XXV. 


LETTER XXVI. 


Page 
483 
483 
485 
486 
490 
498 
498 
504 
505 
506 
506 
506 
506 
507 
507 
509 
510 
512 
513 
514 
515 
515 
517 


519—537 


519 
523 
524 
527 
527 
527 
528 
528 
529 
530 
533 
533 


538—549 


538 
540 
543 
543 
544 
546 
547 
548 


- 550—567 


550 
552 
553 
553 


CONTENTS. ai 


Page 

Hysernation or Insects—continued. 

Time of hybernation . «= . - - 554 
Site of hybernacula - - ~ - - 554 
Solitary and social hybernation - - - - 555 
Hybernation in several states - - - - 555 
Torpidity produced by cold - : - - - 556 
Variations of torpidity . Z - - - 556 
Some insects never torpid - - - - s * 558 
State of the Hive-bee in winter - - - - 558 
Power of resisting cold by insects in erie states - i 560 
Cause of this power - - . 2 562 
Resumption of activity - - - = = 563 
Cause of hybernation - - = - = 565 
LETTER XXVII. 

Instinct or Insects - - - - - 568 
Nature of instinct - - - - - 568 
Definition of instinct - - - - = 570 
Exquisiteness of the instincts of Insects - - - 571 
Variations of instinct - - - - - 572 
Variations of instinct in the Hive-bee - - - . 576 
These variations not the result of reason - . - 583 
Number of instincts in Insects - - - - 584 
Extraordinary development of instinct in Insects - - 589 
Reason in Insects - - ~ wise _- 591 
Insects gain knowledge from experience - - - 596 

receive and communicate information - - - 597 


are endowed with memory - - - - 598 


Plate L 


Plate {ff 


haat 


hee 


Ht 


EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 


Fig. 


Fig. 


Fig. 


aanr 1 WO 


rh) 


PLATE I. 


CoLEoPpTERA. 


. Calosoma Sycophanta. 

. Staphylinus cyaneus. 

. Siagonium quadricorne, K., magnified. 
. Malthinus. 

. Necydalis minor. 


. Meloe. 


DERMAPTERA. 


. Forficula gigantea. 


PLATE II. 


STREPSIPTERA. 


. Xenos Peckii, K. Linn. Trans. 


ORTHOPTERA. 


. Acheta Gryllotalpa. 
. Blatta germanica. 


HEMIPTERA. 


. Ledra aurita. 
. Pentatoma rufipes. 


PLATE III. 


LEPIDOPTERA. 


. Lycena dispar mas. 
. Sesia asiliformis. 
. Deiopeia pulchella. 


TRICHOPTERA. 


. Phryganea varia? 


NEvROPTERA. 


. Libellula cancellata. 
. Raphidia notata, Fab. Mantiss. 


. 
ie" 


XXIV 


EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 


PLATE IV. 
HYMENOPTERA. 


. Sirex Gigas. 
. Evania appendigaster magnified. 
. Nomada Marshamella. 


Fig. 


wwe 


Diptera. 


4. Pedicia rivosa. 
5. Sericomyia Lapponum. 


PLATE V. 


Fig. 1. Oxypterum Kirbyanum Lach, magnified. 


APHANIPTERA. 


io 


. Pulex irritans magnified. 


APTERA. 


. Ricinus Pavonis magnified. 

. Aranea marginata Donovan. 

. Chelifer cancroides magnified. 

. Scolopendra (Lithobius) forficata. 


Date w 


> 


f 


Sot es al ee 


a 


x 


As 


Mate LV" 


e 


a 


Plate V 


"4 
é Mt 
a 
os 


AN 


INTRODUCTION 


TO 


ENTOMOLOGY. 


LETTER I. 


Dear Sir, 

J cannot wonder that an active mind like yours should experience no 
small degree of tedium in a situation so far removed, as you represent your 
new residence to be, from the “busy hum of men.” Nothing certainly 
can compensate for the want of agreeable society ; but since your case, in 
this respect, admits of no remedy but patience, I am glad you are desirous 
of turning your attention to some pursuit which may amuse you in the 
intervals of severer study, and in part supply the void of which you com- 
plain. Iam not a little flattered that you wish to be informed which class 
in the three kingdoms of nature is, in my opinion, most likely to answer 
your purpose; at the same time intimating that you feel inclined to give 
the preference to Entomology, provided some objections can be satisfacto- 
rily obviated, which you have been accustomed to regard as urged with a 
considerable semblance of reason against the cultivation of that science. 

Mankind in general, not excepting even philosophers, are prone to mag- 
nify, often beyond its just merit, the science or pursuit to which they have 
addicted themselves, and to depreciate any that seems to stand in compe- 
tition with their favorite: like the redoubted champions of romance, each 
thinks himself bound to take the field against every one that will not sub- 
scribe to the peerless beauty and accomplishments of his own Dulcinea. 
In such conflict for pre-eminence I know no science that, in this country, 
has come off worse than Entomology : her champions hitherto have been 
so few, and their efforts so unavailing, that all her rival sisters have been 
exalted above her; and I believe there is scarcely any branch of Natural 
History that has had fewer British admirers. While Botany boasts of her 
hosts, she, though not her inferior either in beauty, symmetry, or grace, 
has received the homage of a very slender train indeed. Since therefore 
the merits of Entomology have been so little acknowledged, you will not 
deem it invidious if I advocate the cause of this distressed damsel, and 
endeavor to effect her restoration to her just rights, privileges, and rank. 


4 


38 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 


Things that are universally obvious and easy of examination, as they 
are the first that fall under our notice, so are they al8o most commonly 
those which we first feel an inclination to study ; while, on the contrary, 
things that must be sought for in order to be seen, and which when sought 
for avoid the approach and inquiring eye of man, are often the last to 
which he directs his attention. The vegetable kingdom stands in the fore 
mer predicament. Flora, with a liberal hand, has scattered around us her 
charming productions; they every where meet and allure us, enchanting 
us by their beauty, regaling us by their fragrance, and interesting us as 
much by their subservience to our luxuries and comfort, as to the neces- 
sary support and well-being of our life. Beasts, birds, and fishes, also, in 
some one or other of these respects, attract our notice; but insects, unfor- 
tunate insects, are so far from attracting us, that we are accustomed to 
abhor them from ourchildhood. ‘The first knowledge that we get of them 

‘is as tormentors ; they are usually pointed out to us by those about us, as 
ugly, filthy, and noxious creatures ; and the whole insect world, butter- 
flies perhaps and some few others excepted, are devoted by one universal 
ban to proscription and execration, as fit only to be trodden under our feet 
and crushed ; so that often, before we can persuade ourselves to study 
them, we have to remove from our minds prejudices deeply rooted and of 
long standing. 

Another principal reason which has contributed to keep Entomology in 
the back ground arises from the diminutive size of the objects of which it 
treats. Being amongst the most minute of nature’s productions, they do 
not so readily catch the eye of the observer; and when they do, mankind 
in general are so apt to estimate the worth and importance of things by 
their bulk, that because we usually measure them by the duodecimals of 
an inch instead of by the foot or by the yard, insects are deemed too in- 
significant parts of the creation, and of too little consequence to its general 
welfare, to render them worthy of any serious attention or study. What 
small foundation there is for such prejudices and misconception, I shall 
endeavor to show in the course of our future correspondence ; my object 
now, as the champion and advocate of Entomology, is to point out to 
you, her comparative advantages, and to remove the veil which has hith- 
erto concealed those attractions, and that grace and beauty, which entitle 
her to equal admiration at least with her sister branches of Natural 
History. 

In estimating the comparative value of the study of any department in 
this branch of science, we ought to contrast it with others, as to the rank 
its objects hold in the scale of being; the amusement and instruction 
which the student may derive from it; and its utility to society at large. 
With respect to public utility, the study of each of the three kingdoms 
may perhaps be allowed to stand upon nearly an equal footing; I shall 
not, therefore, enter upon that subject till I come to consider the question 
Cui bono? and to point out the uses of Entomology, but confine myself 
now to the two first of these circumstances. 

As to rank, I must claim for the entomologist some degree of prece- 
dence before the mineralogist and the botanist. The mineral kingdom, 
whose objects are neither organized nor sentient, stands certainly at the foot 
of the scale. Next above this is the vegetable, whose lovely tribes, though 


INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 39 


not endued with sensation, are organized. In the last and highest place, 
ranks the animal world, consisting of beings that are both organized and 
sentient. ‘To this scale of precedence, the great modern Juminary of 
Natural History, notwithstanding that Botany was always his favorite pur- 
suit, has given his sanction, acknowledging in the preface to his Fauna 
Suecica, that although the vegetable kingdom is nobler than the mineral, 
yet the animal is more excellent than the vegetable. Now it is an indis- 
putable axiom, I should think, that the more exalted the object the more 
excellent the study. By this observation, however, I would by no means 
be thought to depreciate or discountenance the study either of plants or 
minerals. All the works of our Creator are great, and worthy of our 
attention and investigation, the lowest in the scale as well as the highest, 
the most minute and feeble as well as those that exceed in magnitude and 
might. Nor ought those whose inclination or genius leads them to one 
department, to say to those who prefer another—“we have no need of 
you”’—for each in his place, by diffusing the knowledge of his works, and 
adding to the stock of previous discoveries, contributes to promote the 
glory of the Great Architect of the universe and the good of his creatures.: 

It is not my wish to claim for my favorite science more than of right 
belongs to her; therefore, when the question is concerning rank, I must 
concede to the higher orders of animals, I mean Fishes, Amphibia, Birds, 
and Quadrupeds, their due priority and precedence.' I shall only observe 
here, that there may exist circumstances which countervail rank, and tend 
to render the study of a lower order of beings more desirable than that of 
a higher: when, for instance, the objects of the higher study are not to 
be come at or preserved without great difficulty and expense; when they 
are few in number; or, when they are already well ascertained and 
known: circumstances which attach to the study of those animals that 
precede insects, while they do not attach to the study of insects themselves. 

With regard to the amusement and instruction of the student, much 
doubtless may be derived from any one of the sciences alluded to ; but 
Entomology certainly is not behind any of her sisters in these respects ; 
and if you are fond of novelty, and anxious to make new discoveries, she 
will open to you a more ample field for these than either Botany or the 
higher branches of Zoology. 

A new vertebrate animal or plant is seldom to be met with even by 
those who have leisure and opportunity for extensive researches ; but if 
you collect insects, you will find, however limited the manor upon which 
you can pursue your game, that your efforts are often rewarded by the 
capture of some nondescript or rarity at present not possessed by other 
entomologists, for I have seldom seen a cabinet so meagre as not to pos- 
sess some unique specimen. Nay, though you may have searched every 
spot in your neighborhood this year, turned over every stone, shaken 
every bush or tree, and fished every pool, you will not have exhausted its 
insect productions. Do the same another year and another, and new 


1 Tf, however, rank were to be estimated by number of species or individuals of a species, 
the pre-eminence could be claimed by insects, which, from the calculations made by 
various entomologists, probably amount to 400,000, or even more, perfectly distinct from 
each other; while for all the other classes of animals together, 30,000 species would be a 
high estimate. 


40 ’ INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 


treasures will still continue to enrich your cabinet. If you leave your 
own vicinity for an entomological excursion, your prospects of success are 
still further increased; and even if confined in bad weather to your inn, 
the windows of your apartment, as I have often experienced, will add to 
your stock. If a sudden shower obliges you at any time to seek shelter 
under a tree, yourattention will be attracted, and the tedium of your sta- 
tion relieved, where the botanist could not hope to find even a new lichen 
or moss, by the appearance of several insects, driven there perhaps by the 
_ same cause as yourself, that you have not observed before. But should 
you, as I trust you will, feel a desire to attend to the manners and econ- 
omy of insects, and become ambitious of making discoveries in this part 
of entomological science, I can assure you, from long experience, that you 
will here find an inexhaustable fund of novelty. For more than twenty 
years my attention has been directed to them, and during most of my 
summer walks my eyes have been employed in observing their ways; yet 
I can say with truth, that so far from having exhausted the subject, within 
the last six months I have witnessed more interesting facts respecting their 
history than in many preceding years. ‘To follow only the insects that 
frequent your own garden, from their first to their last state, and to trace 
all their proceedings, would supply an interesting amusement for the 
remainder of your life, and at its close you would leave much to be done 
by your successor; for where we know thoroughly the history of one 
insect, there are hundreds concerning which we have ascertained little 
besides the bare fact of their existence. 

But numerous other sources of pleasure and information will open them- 
selves to you, not inferior to what any other science can furnish, when you 
enter more deeply into the study. Insects, indeed, appear to have been 
nature’s favorite productions, in which, to manifest her power and skill, 
she has combined and concentrated almost all that is either beautiful and 
graceful, interesting and alluring, or curious and singular, in every other 
class and order of her children. To these, her valued miniatures, she has 
given the most delicate touch and highest finish of her pencil. Numbers 
she has armed with glittering mail, which reflects a lustre like that of bur- 
nished metals! ; in others she lights up the dazzling radiance of polished 
gems.” Some she has decked with what looks like liquid drops, or plates 
of gold and silver?; or with scales or pile, which mimic the color and 
emit the ray of the same precious metals. Some exhibit a rude exterior, 
like stones in their native state®, while others represent their smooth and 
shining face after they have been submitted to the tool of the polisher: 
others, again, like so many pigmy Atlases bearing on their backs a micro- 
cosm, by the rugged and various elevations and depressions of their 
tuberculated crust, present to the eye of the beholder no unapt imitation 
of the unequal. surface of the earth, now horrid with misshapen rocks, 
ridges, and precipices—now swelling into hills and mountains, and now 


1 The genera Eumolpus, Lamprima, Rynchites. 

2 Cryptorhynchus corruscans. Germar (Insect. Spec. Nov. i. 216.) regards this insect as 
synonymous with Illiger’s Eurhinus cupratus, the description of which I had not seen when 
the Century of Insects (Linn. Trans. xii.) was written, nor am I able now to speak de- 
cisively on the subject.—K. 

3 Erycina Cupido, Argynnis Passiflore, Lathonia, &c. 

4 Pepsis fuscipennis, argentata, &c. 5 The species of the genus Troz. 


INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 41 


sinking into valleys, glens, and caves!; while not a few are covered with 
branching spines, which fancy may form into a forest of trees.? 

What numbers vie with the charming offspring of Flora in various 
beauties! some in the delicacy and variety of their colors, colors not 
like those of flowers evanescent and fugitive, but fixed and durable, sur- 
viving their subject, and adorning it as much after death as they did when 
it was alive; others, again, in the veining and texture of their wings ; and 
others in the rich cottony down that clothes them. ‘To such perfection, 
indeed, has nature in them carried her mimetic art, that you would declare, 
upon beholding some insects, that they had robbed the trees of their 
leaves to form for themselves artificial wings, so exactly do they resemble 
them in their form, substance, and vascular structure; some representing 
green leaves, and others those that are dry and withered. Nay, some- 
times this mimicry is so exquisite, that you would mistake the whole insect 
for a portion of the branching spray of a tree.‘ No mean beauty in some 
plants arises from the fluting and punctuation of their stems and leaves, 
and a similar ornament conspicuously distinguishes numerous insects, which 
also imitate with multiform variety, as may particularly be seen* in the 
caterpillars of many species of certain tribes of butterflies (Nymphalidae), 
the spines and prickles which are given as a Noli me tangere armor to 
several vegetable productions. 

In fishes the lucid scales, of varied hue, that cover and defend them, 
are universally admired, and esteemed their peculiar ornament ; but place 
a butterfly’s wing under a microscope, that avenue to unseen glories in new 
worlds, and you will discover that nature has endowed the most numerous 
of the insect tribes with the same privilege, multiplying in them the 
forms®, and diversifying the coloring of this kind of clothing beyond all 
parallel. The rich and velvet tints of the plumage of birds are not 
superior to what the curious observer may discover in a variety of Lepid- 
optera; and those many-colored eyes which deck so gloriously the 
peacock’s tail are imitated with success by one of our most common but- 
terflies.© Feathers are thought to be peculiar to birds; but insects often 
imitate them in their antenne’, wings®, and even sometimes in the cover- 
ing of their bodies..—We admire with reason the coats of quadrupeds, 
whether their skins be covered with pile, or wool, or fur; yet are not 
perhaps aware that a vast variety of insects are clothed with all these 
kinds of hair, but infinitely finer and more silky in texture, more brilliant 
and delicate in color, and more variously shaded than what any other 
animals can pretend to. 

In variegation, insects certainly exceed every other class of animated 
beings. Nature, in her sportive mood, when painting them, sometimes 
imitates the clouds of heaven ; at others, the meandering course of the 
rivers of the earth, or the undulations of their waters: many are veined 


1 Many of the Scarabaeidae, Dynastidz, &c. 

* Many caterpillars of Butterflies. (Merian, Surinam, t. xxii. xxv. &c.) and of Samflies. 
(Réaum. v. ¢. xii. f. 7, 8—14.) 

% Various species of the families Gryllide and Mantide. 

4 Many species of Phasmide. 

® De Geer, I. ¢. 3. f. 1—34, &c. Audouin, Hist. Pyr. de la Vigne, pl. 3. 

§ Vanessa Io. 7 Culex, Chironomus, and other Tipulidae. 8 Pterophorus. 

® Hairs of many of the Apide. Mon. Ap. Ang. I. t. 10, **d. 1. f. 1. 3. 


4* 


42 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 


like beautiful marbles ; others have the semblance of a robe of the finest 
net-work thrown over them; some she blazons with» heraldic insignia, 
giving them to bear in fields sable—azure—vert—gules—argent and or, 
fesses—bars—bends—crosses—crescents—stars, and even animals.! On 
many, taking her rule and compasses, she draws with precision mathemat- 
ical figures; points, lines, angles, triangles*, squares, and circles. On 
others she portrays, with mystic hand, what seem like hieroglyphic 
symbols, or inscribes them with the characters and letters of various 
languages, often very correctly formed*; and, what is more extraordinary, 
she has registered in others figures which correspond with several dates of 
the Christian era.* 

Nor has nature been lavish only in the apparel and ornament of these 
privileged tribes ; in other respects she has been equally unsparing of her 
favors. To some she has given fins like those of fish, or a beak resem- 
bling that of birds®; to others horns, nearly the counterparts of those of 
various quadrupeds. The bull®, the stag’, the rhinoceros®, and even the 
hitherto vainly sought for unicorn’, have in this respect many representa- 
tives amongst insects. One is armed with tusks not unlike those of the 
elephant” ; another is bristled with spines, as the porcupine and hedge-hog 
with quills"; a third is an armadillo in miniature ; the disproportioned hind 
legs of the kangaroo give a most grotesque appearance to a fourth”; 
and the threatening head of the snake is found ina fifth. It would, how- 
ever, be endless to produce all the instances which occur of such imita- 
tions ; and I shall only remark that, generally speaking, these arms and 
instruments in structure and finishing far exceed those which they resemble. 

But further, insects not only mimic, in a manner infinitely various, 
every thing in nature, they may also with very little violence be regarded 
as symbolical of beings out of and above nature. The butterfly, adorned 
with every beauty and every grace, borne by radiant wings through the © 
fields of ether, and extracting nectar from every flower, gives us some 
idea of the blessed inhabitants of happier worlds, of angels, and of the 
spirits of the just arrived at their state of perfection. Again, other insects 
seem emblematical of a different class of unearthly beings: when we 
behold some tremendous for the numerous horns and spines projecting in 
horrid array from their head or shoulders ;—others for their threatening jaws 
of fearful length, and ‘armed with cruel fangs: when we survey the 
dismal hue and demoniac air that distinguish others, the dens of dark- 
ness in which they live, the impurity of their food, their predatory 
habits and cruelty, the nets which they spread, and the pits which they 
sink to entrap the unwary, we can scarcely help regarding them as aptly 


1 Ptinus imperialis, L. 2 Trichius ( Archimedius K.) delta, F. 

3 Acrocinus longimanus, F. Vanessa C. album, Acronycta ~, Plusia y. 

4 On the underside of the primary wings near the margin in Argynnis Aglaia, Lathonia, 
Selene, &c. 5 Empis, Asilus. 8 Onthophagus Taurus, Curtis, Brit. Ent. t. 52. 

7 Lucanus Cervus. 8 Oryctes. 9 Dynastes Hercules. 

10 Andrena spinigera. Melitta. **c. K. and especially Dicronocephalus Hardnickii and 
— smaragdulus, Westw. Arc. Ent. P|. 33. fig. 2. 

NN Hispa. 

12 Scarabeus macropus, Francillon. Now ascertained, by the discovery of numerous 
specimens by the French collectors, to be the male of a species of the genus Chrysina K. 
Mr. W. S. MacLeay informs us that he gave the manuscript name of Eusceles to the group 
to which it belongs. 

13 Raphidia ophiopsis. 


INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 43 


symbolizing evil demons, the enemies of man, or of impure spirits, for 
their vices and crimes driven from the regions of light into darkness and 
punishment.' 

The sight indeed of a well-stored cabinet of insects will bring before 
every beholder not conversant with them, forms in endless variety, which 
before he would not have thought it possible could exist in nature, resem- 
bling nothing that the other departments of the animal kingdom exhibit, 
and exceeding even the wildest fictions of the most fertile imagination. 
Besides prototypes of beauty and symmetry, there in miniature he will 
be amused to survey (for the most horrible creatures when deprived of 
the power of injury become sources of interest and objects of curiosity), 
to use the words of our great poet, 

. . « « . . all prodigious things 
Abominable, unutterable, and worse 
Than fables yet have feign’d, or fear conceiv’d, 
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. 

But the pleasures of a student of the science to which I am desirous 
of introducing you are far from being confined to such as result from an 
examination of the exterior form and decorations of insects: for could 
these, endless as they seem, be exhausted, or, wonderful as they are, lose 
their interest, yet new sources, exuberant in amusement and instruction, 
may be opened, which will furnish an almost infinite fund for his curiosity 
to draw upon. The striking peculiarity and variety of structure which 
they exhibit in their instruments of nutrition, motion, and oviposition ; in 
their organs of sensation, generation, and the great fountains of vitality,— 
indeed their whole system, anatomically considered, will open a world of 
wonders to you with which you will not soon be satiated, and during your 
survey of which you will at every step feel disposed to exclaim with the 
Roman naturalist—* In these beings so minute, and as it were such non- 
entities, what wisdom is displayed, what power, what unfathomable _per- 
fection!’ But even this will not bring you to the end of your pleasures : 
you must leave the dead to visit the living; you must behold insects when 
full of life and activity, engaged in their several employments, practising 
their various arts, pursuing their amours, and preparing habitations for their 
progeny: you must notice the laying and kind of their eggs; their 
wonderful metamorphoses ; their instincts, whether they be solitary or 
gregarious ; and the other miracles of their history—all of which will 
open to youa richer mine of amusement and instruction, I speak it with- 
out hesitation, than any other department of Natural History can furnish. 
A minute enumeration of these particulars would be here misplaced, and 
only forestall what will be detailed more at large hereafter ; but a rapid 
glance at a very few of the most remarkable of them may serve as a 
stimulus to excite your curiosity, and induce you to enter with greater 
eagerness into the wide field to which I shall conduct you. 

The lord of the creation plumes himself upon his powers of invention, and 
is proud to enumerate the various useful arts and machines to which they 
have given birth, not aware that “ He who teacheth man knowledge” has 


1 This idea seems to have been present to the mind of Linné and Fabricius, when they 
— to insects such names as Belzebub, Belial, Titan, Typhon, Nimrod, Geryon, and the 
ike. 

? Plin. Hist. Nat. 1. 11, ¢. 2. 


AA INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 


instructed these despised insects to anticipate him in many of them. 'The 
builders of Babel doubtless thought their invention of*turning earth into 
artificial stone, a very happy discovery’; yet a little bee? had practised 
this art, using indeed a different process, on a small scale, and the white 
ants on a large one, ever since the world began. Man thinks that he 
stands unrivalled as an architect, and that his buildings are without a 
parallel among the works of the inferior orders of animals. He would be 
of a different opinion did he attend to the history of insects: he would 
find that many of them have been architects from time immemorial ; that 
they have had their houses divided into various apartments, and containing 
staircases, gigantic arches, domes, colonades, and the like; nay, that even 
tunnels are excavated by them so immense, compared with their own size, 
as to be twelve times bigger than that of Sir M. I. Brunell under the 
Thames.* The modern fine lady, who prides herself on the lustre and 
beauty of the scarlet hangings which adorn the stately walls of her draw- 
ing-room, or the carpets that cover its floor, fancying that nothing so rich 
and splendid was ever seen before, and pitying her vulgar ancestors, who 
were doomed to unsightly white-wash and rushes, is ignorant al] the while, 
that before she or her ancestors were in existence, and even before the 
boasted ‘Tyrian dye was discovered, a little insect had known how to hang 
the walls of its cell with tapestry of a scarlet more brilliant than any her 
rooms can exhibit*, and that others daily weave silken carpets, both in 
tissue and texture infinitely superior to those she so much admires. No 
female ornament is more prized and costly than lace, the invention and 
fabrication of which seems the exclusive claim of the softer sex. But 
even here they have been anticipated by these little industrious creatures, 
who often defend their helpless chrysalis by a most singular covering, and 
as beautiful as singular, of lace.® Other arts have been equally forestalled 
by these creatures. What vast importance is attached to the invention of 
paper! For nearly six thousand years one of our commonest insects has 
known how to make and apply it to its purposes®; and even pasteboard, 
superior in substance and polish to any we can produce, is manufactured 
by another.’ We imagine that nothing short of human intellect can be 
equal to the construction of a diving-bell or an air-pump—yet a spider is 
in the daily habit of using the one, and, what is more, one exactly similar 
in principal to ours, but more ingeniously contrived; by means of which 
she resides unwetted in the bosom of the water, and procures the neces- 
sary supplies of air by a much more simple process than our alternating 
buckets*—and the caterpillar of a little moth knows how to imitate the 
other, producing a vacuum, when necessary for its purposes, without any 
piston beside its own body.® If we think with wonder of the populous 
cities which have employed the united labors of man for many ages to 
bring them to their full extent, what shall we say to the white ants, which 
require only a few months to build a metropolis capable of containing an 
infinitely greater number of inhabitants than even imperial Nineveh, 
Babylon, Rome, or Pekin, in all their glory ? 
“1 Gen, xi. 3. 2 Megachile muraria. 3 The white ants. 4 Megachile Papaveris. 

5 The late ingenious Mr. Paul, of Harlston in Norfolk, under the bark of a tree discov- 
ered a considerable portion of a fabric of this kind, which from its amplitude must have 


been destined for some other purpose. 
6 The common wasp, 7 Chartergus nidulans. * Argyroneta aquatica. ° Tinea serratella, L. 


INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 45 


That insects should thus have forestalled us in our inventions ought to 
urge us to pay acloser attention to them and their ways than we have 
hitherto done, since it is not at all improbable that the result would be 
many useful hints for the improvement of our arts and manufactures; and 
perhaps for some beneficial discoveries. The painter might thus probably 
be furnished with more brilliant pigments, the dyer with more delicate 
tints, and the artisan with a new and improved set of tools. In this fast 
respect insects deserve particular notice. All their operations are per- 
formed with admirable precision and dexterity ; and though they do not 
usually vary the mode, yet that mode is always the best that can be con- 
ceived for attaining the end in view. ‘The instruments also with which 
they are provided are no less wonderful and various than the operations 
themselves. ‘They have their saws, and files, and augers, and gimblets, 
and knives, and lancets, and scissors, and forceps, with many other similar 
implements ; several of which act in more than one capacity, and with a 
complex and alternate motion to which we have not yet attained in the 
use of our tools. Nor is the fact so extraordinary as it may seem at first, 
since ‘ He who is wise in heart and wonderful in working”? is the inventor 
and fabricator of the apparatus of insects; which may be considered as a 
set of miniature patterns drawn for our use by a Divine hand. I shall 
hereafter give you a more detailed account of some of the most striking 
of these instruments; and if you study insects in this view, you will be 
well repaid for all the labor and attention you bestow upon them. 

But a more important species of instruction than any hitherto enume- 
rated may be derived from entomological pursuits. If we attend to the 
history and manners of insects, they will furnish us with many useful 
lessons in Ethics, and from them we may learn to improve ourselves in 
various virtues. We have indeed the inspired authority of the wisest of 
mankind for studying them in this view, since he himself wrote a treatise 
upon them, and sends his sluggard to one for a lesson of wisdom. And if 
we value diligence and indefatigable industry, judgment, prudence, and 
foresight, economy, and frugality ; if we look upon modesty and diffidence 
as female ornaments ; if we revere parental affection; of all these, and 
many more virtues, insects in their various instincts exhibit several striking 
examples, as you will see in the course of our correspondence. 

With respect to religious instruction insects are far from unprofitable ; 
Indeed in this view Entomology seems to possess peculiar advantages 
above every other branch of Natural History. In the larger animals, 
though we admire the consummate art and wisdom manifested in their 
structure, and adore that Almighty power and goodness, which by a won- - 
derful machinary, kept in motion by the constant action and re-action of 
the great positive and negative powers of nature, maintains in full force 
the circulations necessary to life, perception, and enjoyment ; yet as there 
seems no disproportion between the objects and the different operations 
that are going on in them, and we see that they afford sufficient space for 
the play of their systems, we do not experience the same sensations of 
wonder and astonishment that strike us when we behold similar operations 
carried on without interruption in animals scarcely visible to the naked 


1 1 Kings, iv. 33. Prov. vi. 6—8. 


46 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 


eye. That creatures, which in the scale of being are next to nonentities, 
should be elaborated with so much art and contrivance, have such a num- 
ber of parts both internal and external, all so highly finished and each so 
nicely calculated to answer its end; that they should include in this 
evanescent form such a variety of organs of perception and instruments 
of motion, exceeding in number and peculiarity of structure those of other 
animals; that their nervous and respiratory systems should be so complex, 
their secretory and digestive vessels so various and singular, their parts of 
generation so clearly developed, and that these minims of nature should be 
endowed with instincts in many cases superior to all our boasted powers of 
intellect—truly these wonders and miracles declare to every one who 
attends to the subject, “ The hand that made us is divine.” We are the 
work of a Being infinite in power, in wisdom, and in goodness. 

But no religious doctrine is more strongly established by the history of 
insects than that of asuperintending Provipence. ‘That of the innumer- 
able species of these beings, many of them beyond conception fragile and 
exposed to dangers and enemies without end, no link should be lost from 
the chain, but all be maintained in those relative proportions necessary for 
the general good of the system, that if one species for a while prepon- 
derate, and instead of preserving seem to destroy, yet counter-checks 
should at the same time be provided to reduce it within its due limits ; and 
further, that the operations of insects should be so directed and overruled 
as to effect the purposes for which they were created and never exceed 
their commission: nothing can furnish a stronger proof than this, that an 
unseen hand holds the reins, now permitting one to preyail and now 
another, as shall best promote certain wise ends; and saying to each, 
“« Hitherto shalt thou come and no further.” 

So complex is this mundane system, and so incessant the conflict 
between its component parts, an observation which holds good particu- 
larly with regard to insects, that if instead of being under such control it 
were left to the agency of blind chance, thee whole must inevitably soon 
be deranged and go to ruin. Insects, in truth, are a book in which 
whoever reads under proper impressions cannot avoid looking from the 
effect to the Cause, and acknowledging his eternal power and godhead 
thus wonderfully displayed and irrefragably demonstrated : and whoever 
beholds these works with the eyes of the body must be blind indeed if he 
cannot, and perverse indeed if he will not, with the eye of the soul, 
behold in all his glory the Almighty Workman, and feel disposed, with 
every power of his nature, to praise and magnify 


Him first, Him last, Him midst, Him without end. 


And now having led you to the vestibule of an august temple, which 
in its inmost sanctuary exhibits enshrined in glory the symbols of the 
Divine Presence, I should invite you to enter and give a tongue to the 
Hallelujahs, which every creature in its place, by working his will with 
all its faculties, pours forth to his great Creator: but I must first endea- 
vor to remove, as I trust I shall effectually, those objections to the study 
of these interesting beings which I alluded to in the outset of this letter, 
and this shall be the aim of my next address. 

I am, &c. 


AT 


LETTER II. 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


In my last I gave you a general view of the science of Entomology, and 
endeavored to prove to you that it possesses attractions and beauty suffi- 
cient to reward any student who may profess himself its votary. Iam 
now to consider it in a less alluring light, as a pursuit attended by no 
small degree of obloquy, in consequence of certain objections thought to 
be urged with great force against it. To obviate these, and remove every 
scruple from your mind, shall be the business of the present letter. 

Two principal objections are usually alleged with great confidence against 
the study and pursuit of insects. By some they are derided as trifling 
and unimportant, and deemed an egregious waste of time and talents ; by 
others they are reprobated as unfeeling and cruel, and as tending to harden 
the heart. 

‘ 

I. I shall begin with the first of these objections—that the entomologist 
is a mere trifler. As for the silly outcry and abuse of the ignorant 
vulgar, who are always ready to laugh at what they do not understand, 
and because insects are minute objects conclude that the study of them 
must bea childish pursuit, 1 shall not waste words upon what I so cor- 
dially despise. But since even learned men and philosophers, from a 
partial and prejudiced view of the subject, having recourse to this common- 
place logic, are sometimes disposed to regard all inquiry into these minutie 
of nature as useless and idle, and the mark of a little mind; to remove 
such prejudice and misconceptions I shall now dilate somewhat upon the 
et of Cui bono? 

hen we see many wise and learned men pay attention to any par- 
ticular department of science, we may naturally conclude that it is on 
account of some profit and instruction which they foresee may be derived 
from it; and therefore in defending Entomology | shall first have recourse 
to the argumentum ad verecundiam, and mention the great names that 
have cultivated or recommended it. 

We may begin the list with the first man that ever lived upon the earth, 
for we are told that he gave a name to every living creature’, amongst 
which insects must be included; and to give an appropriate name to an 
object necessarily requires some knowledge of its distinguishing properties. 
Indeed one of the principal pleasures and employments of the paradisiacal 
state was probably the study of the various works of creation.” Before 
the fall the book of nature was the Bible of man, in which he could read 
the perfections and attributes of the invisible Godhead®, and in it, as in a 
mirror, behold an image of the things of the spiritual world. Moses also 
appears to have been conversant with our little animals, and to have 


1 Gen, ii. 19. 2 Linn. Fn. Suec. Pref. 3 Rom. i. 19, 20. 


48 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


studied them with some attention. This he has shown, not only by being 
aware of thedistinctions which separate the various tribes of grasshoppers, 
crickets, &c. (Gryllus, L.) into different genera’, but also by noticing the 
different direction of the two anterior from the four posterior legs of insects ; 
for, as he speaks of them as going upon four legs*, it is evident that he 
considered the two anterior as arms. Solomon, the wisest of mankind, 
made Natural History a peculiar object of study, and left treatises behind 
him upon its various branches, in which creeping things or insects were 
not overlooked*®; and a wiser than Solomon directs our attention to natural 
productions, when he bids us consider the lilies of the field*, teaching us 
that they are more worthy of our notice than the most glorious works of 
man: he also not obscurely intimates that insects are symbolical beings, 
when he speaks of scorpions as synonymous with evil spirits®; thus 
giving into our hands a clue for a more profitable mode of studying them, 
as furnishing moral and spiritual instruction. 

If to these scriptural authorities we add those of uninspired writers, 
ancient and modern, the names of many worthies, celebrated both for wis- 
dom and virtue, may be produced. Aristotle among the Greeks, and Pliny 
the elder among the Romans, may be denominated the fathers of Natural] 
History, as well as the greatest philosophers of their day ; yet both these 
made insects a principal object of their attention: and in more recent 
times, if we look abroad, what names greater than those of Redi, Mal- 
pighi, Vallisnieri, Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek, Reaumur, Linné, De 
Geer, Bonnet, and the Hubers? and at home, what philosophers have 
done more honor to their country and to human nature than Ray, Wil- 
lughby, Lister, and Derham? Yet all these made the study of insects one 
of their most favorite pursuits; and, as if to prove that this study is not 
incompatible with the highest flights of genius, we can add to the list the 
name of one of the most sublime of our poets, Gray, who was very zeal- 
ously devoted to Entomology; as were the celebrated modern artists, 
Fuseli and Stothard, and that prodigy of talent, our Dr. Thomas Young, 
one of whose first essays was upon the habits of spiders, and above all, 
the immortal Cuvier, who began his career in this science, and-retained for 
it to the last a strong predilection.® As far therefore as names have weight, 


1 Levit. xi. 21, 22. Lichtenstein in Linn. Trans. iv. 51, 52. 

2 Levit. xi. 20. conf. Bochart, Hierozoic. ii. 1. 4. c. 9. 497, 498. 

3 1 Kings, iv. 33. 4 Luke, xii. 27. - § Thid. x. 195 20: 

6 Several manuscript volumes of Cuvier’s description of insects, and beautifully accurate 
figures by his own pen, begun to be written and drawn when he was but seventeen years 
of age, and continued for five or six years following, still exist (fac-similes of some of 
which have recently been published in Silvermann’s Revue Entomologique) ; and it was, as 
he himself avowed, the marvels which he discovered in the organization of insects which 
elevated his genius to the still higher conceptions which made him the first naturalist of 
the age. In acknowledging the honor which the Entomological Society of France had 
conferred on him, in electing him an honorary member, he thus expressed himself in his 
letter, dated, alas! but a fortnight before his death. ‘I should have been more worthy of 
the honor formerly, when in my youth this fine science occupied all my leisure moments, 
but if other branches of natural history have not permitted me to give myself up to it with 
the same ardor, I do not the less feel always the greatest interest init.” “Tf,” said he one 
day to his friend, Professor Audouin, “I had not studied insects when I was at college 
from taste, I should, at a later period, from reason and necessity.” For he was convinced 
that the habit of devoting the entire attention to the examination of minute details, and 
the.experience of the danger of falling into error the moment this habit is deviated from, 
are most useful preliminaries to the study of the higher animals, and to enable us to derive 
from it its most valuable fruits. “Are you an entomologist?” he asked, one day in M. 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 49 


the above enumeration seems sufficient to shelter the votaries of this pleas- 
ing science from the charge of folly. 

But we do not wish to rest our defence upon authorities alone ; let the 
voice of reason be heard, and our justification will be complete. The 
entomologist, or, to speak more generally, the naturalist (for on this ques- 
tion of Cui bono? every student in all departments of Natural History is 
concerned), if the following considerations be allowed their due weight, 
may claim a much higher station amongst the learned than has hitherto 
been conceded to him. 

There are two principal avenues to knowledge—the study of words 
and the study of things. Skill in the learned languages being often neces- 
sary to enable us to acquire knowledge in the former way, is usually 
considered as knowledge itself; so that no one asks Cut bono? whena 
person devotes himself to the study of verbal criticism, and employs his 
time in correcting the errors that have crept into the text of an ancient 
writer. Indeed it must be owned, though perhaps too much stress is 
sometimes laid upon it, that this is very useful to enable us to ascertain his 
true meaning. But after all, words are but the arbitrary signs of ideas, 
and have no value independent of those ideas, further than what arises 
from congruity and harmony, the mind being dissatisfied when an idea is 
expressed by inadequate words, and the ear offended when their collocation 
is inharmonious. ‘To account the mere knowledge of words, therefore, as 
wisdom, is to mistake the cask for the wine, and the casket for the gem. 
Tsay all this because knowledge of words is often extolled beyond its just 
merits, and put for all wisdom; while knowledge of things, especially ot 
the productions of nature, is derided as if it were mere folly. We should 
recollect that God hath condescended to instruct us by both these ways, 
and therefore neither of them should be depreciated. He hath set before 
us his word and his world. The former is the great avenue to truth and 
knowledge by the study of words, and, as being the immediate and au- 
thoritative revelation of his will, is entitled to our principal attention ; the 
latter leads us to the same conclusions, though less directly, by the study 
of things, which stands next in rank to that of God’s word, and before 
that of any work of man. And whether we direct our eyes to the planets 
rolling in their orbits, and endeavor to trace the laws by which they are 
guided through the vast of space, whether we analyze those powers and 
agents by which all the operations of nature are performed, or whether we 
consider the various productions of this our globe, from the mighty cedar 
to the microscopic mucor—from the giant elephant to the invisible mite, 
still we are studying the works and wonders of our God. The book, to 
whatever page we turn, is written by the finger of him who created us ; 
and in it, provided our minds be rightly disposed, we may read his eternal 


Audouin’s presence, a young man who had ventured to speak to him of some remarkable 
peculiarity which he fancied he had discovered in dissecting a human subject. “No,” 
replied the medical student. “Well then,” rejoined Cuvier, “I advise you to dissect an 
insect. I leave the species to your own choice: it may be the largest you can find; and 
having done this, review your supposed discovery, and if you still think it exact, I will 
take your word for it.”’ The young man, a friend of M. Audouin, submitted with a good 
grace to this test, and having acquired more dexterity and more caution, came shortly to 
thank Cuvier for his advice, and to confess his former mistake. ‘“ You see,” said the later, 
smiling, “ that my touchstone was not bad.’ (Audouin—“ Notice sur George Cuvier.” Ana. 
Soc. Ent. de France, i. 317.) 


5 


50 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


verities. And the more accurate and enlarged our knowledge of his works, 
the better shall we be able to understand his word ;*and the more prac- 
tised we are in his word, the more readily shall we discern his truth in his 
works; for, proceeding from the same great Author, they must, when 
rightly interpreted, mutually explain and illustrate each other. 

Who then shall dare maintain, unless he has the hardihood to deny that 
God created them, that the study of insects and their ways is trifling or 
unprofitable ? Were they not arrayed in all their beauty, and surrounded 
with all their wonders, and made so instrumental (as I shall hereafter prove 
them to be) to our welfare, that we might glorify and praise him for them? 
Why were insects made attractive, if not, as Ray well expresses it, 
that they might ornament the universe and be delightful objects of contem- 
plation to man?! And is it not clear, as Dr. Paley has observed, that the 
production of beauty was as much in the Creator’s mind in painting a but- 
terfly or in studding a beetle, as in giving symmetry to the human frame, 
or graceful curves to its muscular covering ?* And shall we think it be- 
neath us to study what he hath not thought it beneath him to adorn and 
place on this great theatre ofcreation? Nay, shall we extol those to the skies 
who bring together at a vast expense the most valuable specimens of the 
arts, the paintings and statues of Italy and Greece, all of which, however 
beautiful, as works of man, fall short of perfection; and deride and up- 
braid those who collect, for the purpose of admiring their beauty, the fin- 
ished and perfect chef-d’ceuvres of a Divine artist? May we gaze with 
rapture unblamed upon an Apollo of Belvedere, or Venus de Medicis, 
or upon the exquisite paintings of a Raphael or a Titian, and yet when we 
behold with ecstasy sculptures that are produced by the chisel of the 
Almighty, and the inimitable tints laid on by his pencil, because an in- 
sect is the subject, be exposed to jeers and ridicule ? 

But there is another reason, which in the present age renders the study 
of Natural History an object of importance to every well-wisher to the 
cause of religion, who is desirous of exerting his faculties in its defence. 
For as enthusiasm and false religion have endeavored to maintain their 
sround by a perversion of the text of Scripture,so also the patrons of 
infidelity and atheism have labored hard to establish their impiety by a 
perversion of the text of nature. ‘To refute the first of these adversaries 
of truth and sound religion, it is necessary to be well acquainted with the 
word of God; to refute the second, requires an intimate knowledge of his 
works ; and no department can furnish him with more powerful arguments 
of every kind than the world of insects—every one of which cries out in 
an audible voice, There is a God—he is Almighty, all-wise, all-good—his 
watchful providence is ever, and every where, at work for the preservation 
of all things. 

But since mankind in general are too apt to look chiefly at this world, 
and to regard things as important or otherwise in proportion as they are 


1 “ Queri fortasse & nonnullis potest, Quis Papilionum usus sit? Respondeo, Ad ornatum 
Universi, et ut hominibus spectaculo sint : ad rura illustranda velut tot bractez inservientes. 
Quis evim eximiam earum pulchritudinem et varietatem contemplans mira voluptate non 
afficiatur? Quis tot colorum et schematum elegantias nature ipsius ingenio excogitatas et 
arlifici penicillo depictas curiosis oculis intuens, divine artis vestigia eis impressa non 
agnoscat et miretur?” Rai. Hist. Ins. 109. 

2 Nat. Theol. 213. 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 51 


connected with sublunary interests, and promote our present welfare, I 
shall proceed further to prove that the study of insects may be productive 
of considerable utility, even in this view, and may be regarded in some 
sort as a necessary or at least a very useful concomitant of many arts 
and sciences. 

The importance of insects to us both as sources of good or evil, I shall 
endeavor to prove at large hereafter; but for the present, taking this for 
granted, it necessarily follows that the study of them must also be impor- 
tant. For when we suffer from them, if we do not know the cause, how 
are we to apply a remedy that may diminish or prevent their ravages ¢ 
Ienorance in this respect often occasions us to mistake our enemies for our 
friends, and our friends for our enemies; so that when we think to do 
good we only do harm, destroying the innocent and letting the guilty 
escape. Many such instances have occurred. You know the orange-col- 
ored fly of the wheat, and have read the account of the damage done by 
this little insect to that important grain ; you are aware also that it is given 
in charge to three little parasites to keep it within due limits; yet at first . 
it was the general opinion of unscientific men, that these destroyers of our 
enemy were its parents, and the original source of all the mischief.’ Mid- 
dleton, in his “ Agriculture of Middlesex,” speaking of the Plant-louse 

‘that is so injurious to the bean, tells us that the lady-birds are supposed 
either to generate or to feed upon them.” Had he been am entomologist, 
he would have been in no doubt whether they were beneficial or injurious : 
on the contrary, he would have recommended that they should be encour- 
aged as friends to man, since no insects are greater devourers of the 
Aphides. Theconfounding of the apple Aphis, or American blight (A. lan- 
igera®,) that has done such extensive injury to our orchards, with others, 
has led to proceedings still more injurious. ‘This is one of those species 
from the skin of which transpires a white cottony secretion. ‘Some of the 
proprietors of orchards about Evesham, observing an insect which secreted 
a similar substance upon the poplar, imagined that from this tree the crea- 
ture which they had found so noxious was generated ; and in consequence 
of this mistaken notion cut down all their poplars. The same indistinct 
ideas might have induced them to fell all their larches and beeches, since 
they also are infested by Aphides which transpire a similar substance. 
Had these persons possessed any entomological knowledge, they would 
have examined and compared the insects before they had formed their 
opinions, and being convinced that the poplar and apple Aphis are distinct 
species, would have saved their trees. 

But could an entomological observer even ascertain the species of any 
noxious insect, still in many cases, without further information, he may fall 
short of his purpose of prevention. Thus we are told that in Germany 


! Kirby, in Linn. Trans, iv. 232. 235. See also a letter signed C. in the Gent. Mag. for 
August, 1795. This little insect produces no galls like many of the species of the genus, 
(Latr. Gen. Crust. et Ins. iv. 253. Meig. Dipt. i. 94.) yet it corresponds with the characters 
of ee laid down both by Latreille and Meigen. 

2 Pp. 192. 

3 See Latr. Familles Naturelles du Régne Animal, 429. This insect has had four generic 
names given to it, Lachnus by Illiger, Eriosoma by Leach, Myzozyle by Blot, and Schizoneura 
by Hartig in Germar’s Zeitschr. f. d. Entomol. 

4 Collet, in Month. Mag. xxxii. 320. 


52 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

the gardeners and country people, with great industay gather whole bas- 
kets full of the caterpillar of the destructive cabbage moth (Mamestra 
Brassice), and then bury them, which, as Roesel well observes!, is just as 
if we should endeavor to kill a crab by covering it with water; for, many 
of them being full grown and ready to pass into their next state, which 
they do underground, instead of destroying them by this manceuvre, their 
appearing again the following year in greater numbers is actually facilitat- 
ed, Yet this plan applied to our common cabbage caterpillar, which 
does not go underground, would succeed. So that some knowledge of the 
manuers of an insect is often requisite to enable us to check its ravages 
effectually. With respect to noxious caterpillars in general, agriculturists 
and gardeners are not usually aware that the best mode of preventing 
their attacks is to destroy the female fly before she has laid her eggs, to do 
which the moth proceeding from each must be first ascertained. But if 
their research were carried still further, so as to enable them to distinguish 
the pupa and discover its haunts, and it would not be at all difficult to 
detect that of the greatest pest of our gardens, the cabbage butterfly, the 
work might be still more effectually accomplished. Some larve are 
poly phagous, or feed upon a variety of plants; amongst others that of the 
yellow-tail moth (Porthesia chrysorhea) ; yet gardeners think they have 
done enough if they destroy the web-like nests which so often deform our 
fruit-trees, without suspecting that new armies of assailants will wander 
from those on other plants which they have suffered to remain. ‘Thus 
will thousands be produced in the following season, which, had they 
known how to distinguish them, might have been extirpated. Another 
instance occurred to me, when walking with a gentleman in his estate at 
a village in Yorkshire. Our attention was attracted by several circular 
patches of dead grass, each having a stick with rags suspended to it, placed 
in the centre. I at once discerned that the larva of the cock-chafer had 
eaten the roots of the grass, which being pulled up by the rooks that 
devour this mischievous grub, these birds had been mistaken by the tenant 
for the cause of the evil, and the rags were placed to frighten away his 
best friends. On inquiry why he had set up these sticks, he replied, 
“‘ He couldn’t beer to see’d nasty craws pull up all’d gess, and sae he’d 
set’d bairns to hing up some aud clouts to flay’em away. Gin he’d letten 
’em alean they’d sean hev reated up all’d close.” Nor could I con- 
vince him by all that I could say, that the rooks were not the cause of 
the evil. Even philosophers sometimes fall into gross mistakes from this 
species of ignorance. Dr. Darwin has observed, that destroying the 
beautiful but injurious wood-peckers is the only alternative for preventing 
the injury they do to our forest trees by boring into them*; not being 
aware that they bore only those trees which insects have previously attack- 
ed, and that they diminish very considerably the number of such as are 
prejudicial to our forests. 

From these facts it is sufficiently evident that entomological knowledge 
is necessary both to prevent fatal mistakes, and to enable us to check with 
effect the ravages of insects. But ignorance in this respect is not only 
unfit to remedy the evil; on the contrary, it may often be regarded as its 
cause. A large proportion of the most noxious insects in every country 


1 Roesel, I. iv. 170. 2 Phytologia, 518. 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 53 


are not indigenous, but have been imported. It was thus that the moth 
(Galleria Mellonella) so destructive in bee-hives, and the asparagus beetle 
(Crioceris Asparagi), were made denizens of Sweden.’ ‘The insect that 
has destroyed all the peach trees in St. Helena was imported from the 
Cape; and at home (not to mention bugs and cock-roaches) the great 
pest of our orchards, before’ mentioned, the apple Aphis, there is good 
reason to believe, was introduced with some foreign apple-trees. Now, 
extensive as is our commerce, it is next to impossible, by any precautions, 
to prevent the importation of these noxious agents. A cargo of wheat 
from North America might present us with the famed Hessian fly, which 
some years ago caused such trepidation in our cabinet; but though intro- 
duced, the presence of these insects, were Entomology a more general 
pursuit, would soon be detected and the evil at once nipt in the bud ; 
whereas in a country where this science was not at all or little cultivated, 
they would most probably have increased to such an extent before they 
attracted notice, that every effort to extirpate them would be ineffectual. 

It is needless to insist upon the importance of the study of insects, as 
calculated to throw light upon some of the obscurest points of general 
physiology ; nor would it be difficult, though the task might be invidious, 
to point out how grossly incorrect and deficient are many of the specula- 
tions of our most eminent philosophers, solely from their ignorance of this 
important branch of Natural History. How little qualified would that 
physiologist be to reason conclusively upon the mysterious subject of gene- 
ration, who should be ignorant of the wonderful and unlooked-for fact, 
brought to light by the investigations of an entomologist, that one sexual 
intercourse is sufficient to fertilize the eggs of numerous generations of 
Aphides! And how defective would be all our reasonings on the powers 
of nutrition and secretion, had we yet to learn that in insects both are 
in action unaccompanied by the circulating system and glands of larger 
animals ! 

In another point of view entomological information is very useful. A 
great deal of unnecessary mischief is produced, and unnecessary uneasi- 
ness occasioned, by what are called vulgar errors, and that superstitious 
reliance upon charms, which prevents us from having recourse to remedies 
that are really efficacious. Thus, for instance, eating figs and sweet things 
has been supposed to generate lice.” Nine larve of the moth of the wild 
teasel enclosed in a reed or goose quill have been reckoned a remedy for 
ague.* Matthiolus gravely affirms that every oak-gall contains either a fly, 
a spider, or a worm ; and:that the first foretells war, the second pestilence, 
and the third famine.* In Sweden the peasants look upon the grub of the 
cock-chafer as furnishing an unfailing prognostic whether the ensuing 
winter will be mild or severe; if the animal have a bluish hue (a circum- 
stance which arises from its being replete with food) they affirm it will be 
mild, but, on the contrary, if it be white the weather will be severe: and 
they carry this so far as to foretell, that if the anterior part be white and 
the posterior blue, the cold will be most severe at the beginning of the 
winter. Hence they call this grub Bemérkelse-mask, or prognostic worm.° 


? Fn. Suec. 567. 1383. ? Amoreux, 276. 3 Rai. Cat. Cant. 45. Hist. Ins. 341. 
* Comment. in Dioscor. |. 1. c. 23.214. Lesser L. ii. 280. 
5 De Geer, iv. 275, 276. 


5* 


54 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


A similar augury as to the harvest is drawn by the Danish peasants from 
the mites which infest the common dung beetle (Geotrupes stercorarius), 
called in Danish Sharnbosse or Torbist. If there are many of these mites 
between the fore feet, they believe that there will be an early harvest, but 
a late one if they abound between the hind feet.!. The appearance of 
the death’s head hawk-moth (Acherontia Atropos) has in some countries 
produced the most violent alarm and trepidation amongst the people, who, 
because it emits a plaintive sound, and is marked with what looks like a 
death’s head upon its back, regarded it as the messenger of pestilence and 
death.? We learn from Linné that a similar superstition, built upon the 
black hue and strange aspect of that beetle, prevails in Sweden with 
respect to Blaps mortisaga* ; and in Barbadoes, according to Hughes, the 
ignorant deem the appearance of a certain grasshopper in their houses as a 
sure presage of illness to some of the family.4 

One would not think that the excrements of insects could be objects of 
terror, yet so it has been. Many species of Lepidoptera, when they 
emerge from the pupa state, discharge from their anus a redish fluid, which, 
in some instances, where their numbers have been considerable, has pro- 
duced the appearance of a shower of blood; and by this natural fact, all 
those bloody showers, recorded by historians as preternatural, and regarded 
where they happened as fearful prognostics of impending evils, are stripped 
of their terrors, and reduced to the class of events that happen in the 
common course of nature. That insects are the cause of these showers 
is no recent discovery ; for Sleidan relates that in the year 1553 a vast 
multitude of butterflies swarmed through a great part of Germany, and 
sprinkled plants, leaves, buildings, clothes, and men, with bloody drops, as 
if it had rained blood.* But the most interesting account of an event of 
this kind is given by Reaumur, from whom we learn that in the beginning 
of July, 1608, the suburbs of Aix, and a considerable extent of country 
round it, were covered with what appeared to be a shower of blood. We 
may conceive the amazement and stupor of the populace upon such a dis- 
covery, the alarm of the citizens, the»grave reasonings of the learned. 
All agreed however in attributing this appearance to the powers of dark- 
ness, and in regarding it as the prognostic and precursor of some direful 
misfortune about to befall them. Fear and prejudice would have taken 
deep root upon this occasion, and might have produced fatal effects upon 
some weak minds, had not M. Peiresc, a celebrated philosopher of that 
place, paid attention to insects. A chrysalis which he preserved in his 
cabinet let him into the secret of this mysterious shower. Hearing a flut- 
tering, which informed him his insect was arrived at its perfect state, he 
opened the box in which he kept it. The animal flew out and left behind 
it ared spot. He compared this with the spots of the bloody shower, and 
found they were alike. At the same time he observed there was a prodi- 
gious quantity of butterflies flying about, and that the drops of the miracu- 
lous rain were not to be found upon the tiles, nor even upon the upper 
surface of the stones, but chiefly in cavities and places where rain could 


1 Detharding de Insectis Coleopteris Danicis, 9. 

? Reaum. ii. 289. This insect and its caterpillar is finely figured in Mr. Curtis’s elegan 
and scientific British Entomology, t. 147. 

3 Faun. Suec. 822. 4 Nat. Hist. of Barbad. 85. 

5 Quoted in Mouffet, 107. 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED, 55 


not easily come. ‘Thus did this judicious observer dispel the ignorant 
fears and terror which a natural phenomenon had caused. 

The same author relates an instance of the gardener of a gentleman 
being thrown into a horrible fright by digging up some of the curious 
cases, which I shall hereafter describe to you, of the leaf-cutter bees, and 
which he conceived to be the effect of witchcraft portending some terrible 
misfortune. By the advice of the priest of the parish he even took a 
journey from Rouen to Paris, to show them to his master: but he, hap- 
pily having more sense than the man, carried them to M, Nollet, an 
eminent naturalist, who having seen similar productions was aware of the 
cause, and opening one of the cases, while the gardener stood aghast at 
his temerity, pointed out the grub that it contained, and thus sent him back 
with a light heart, relieved from all his apprehensions.” 

Every one has heard of the death-watch, and knows of the superstitious 
notion of the vulgar, that in whatever house its drum is heard one of the 
family will die before the end of the year. These terrors, in particular 
instances, where they lay hold of weak minds, especially of sick or hypo- 
chondriacal persons, may cause the event that is supposed to be prognos- 
ticated. A small degree of entomological knowledge would relieve them 
from all their fears, and teach them that this heart-sickening tick is caused 
by asmall beetle (Anobium tessellatum) which lives in timber, and is 
merely a call to its companion. Attention to Entomology may there- 
fore be rendered very useful in this view, since nothing certainly is more 
desirable than to deliver the human mind from the dominion of supersti- 
tious fears, and false notions, which having considerable influence on the 
conduct of mankind are the cause of no small portion of evil. 

But as we cannot well guard against the injuries produced by insects, 
or remove the evil, whether real or arising from misconceptions respecting 
them, which they occasion, unless we have some knowledge of them; so 
neither without such knowledge can we apply them, when beneficial, to 
our use. Now it is extremely probable that they might be made vastly 
more subservient to our advantage and profit than at present, if we were 
better acquainted with them. It is the remark of an author, who himself 
is no entomologist: “‘We have not taken animals enough into alliance 
with us. ‘The more spiders there were in the stable, the less would the 
horses suffer from the flies. The great American fire-fly should be 
imported into Spain to catch mosquitos. In hot countries areward should 
be offered to the man who could discover what insects feed upon fleas.’’ 
It would be worth our while to act upon this hint, and a similar one of 
Dr. Darwin. Those insects might be collected and preserved that are 
known to destroy the Aphides and other injurious tribes ; and we should 
thus be enabled to direct their operations to any quarter where they would 
be most serviceable ; but this can never be done till experimental agricul- 
turists and gardeners are conversant with insects, and acquainted with their 
properties and economy. How is it that the Great Being of beings 
preserves the system which he has created from permanent injury, in con- 
sequence of the too great redundancy of any individual species, but by 
employing one creature to prey upon another, and so overruling and 


1 Reaum. i. 667. * Reaum. vi. 99, 100. Kirby Mon. Ap. Ang. i. 157, 198. 
3 Southey’s Madoc, 4to. Notes, 519. 


56 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


directing the instincts of all, that they may operate most where they are 
most wanted! We cannot better exercise the reaSoning powers and 
faculties with which he has endowed us, than by copying his example. 
We often employ the larger animals to destroy each other, but the smaller, 
especially insects, we have totally neglected. Some may think, perhaps, 
that in aiming to do this we should be guilty of presumption, and of at- 
tempting to take the government and direction of things out of the hands 
of Providence ; but this is a very weak argument, which might with equal 
reason be adduced to prove that when rats and mice become troublesome 
to us, we ought not to have recourse to dogs, ferrets, and cats to extermi- 
nate them. When any species multiplies upon us, so as to become noxious, 
we certainly have a just right to destroy it, and what means can be more 
proper than those which Providence itself has furnished? We can none 
of us go further or do more than the Divine Will permits; and he will 
take care that our efforts shall not be injurious to the general welfare, or 
effect the annihilation of any individual species. 

Again, with regard to insects that are employed in medicine or the arts, 
if the apothecary cannot distinguish a Cantharis or blister-beetle from a 
Carabus or Cetonia, both of which beetles I have found mixed with the 
former, how can he know whether his druggist furnishes him with a good 
or bad article? And the same observation may with still greater force 
apply to the dyer’in his purchase of cochineal, since it is still more difficult 
to distinguish the wild sort from the cultivated. There are, it is probable, 
many insects that might be employed with advantage in both these depart- 
ments ; but unless Entomology be more generally studied by scientific 
men, who are the only persons likely to make discoveries of this kind, 
than it has hitherto been, we must not hope to derive further profit from 
them. It seems more particularly incumbent upon the professors of the 
divine art of healing to become conversant with this as well as the other 
branches of Natural History ; for not only do they derive some of their 
most useful drugs from insects, but many also of the diseases upon which 
they are consulted, as we shall see hereafter, are occasioned by them. 
For want of this kind of information medical men run the risk of confound- 
ing diseases perfectly distinct, at least as to the animal that causes them. 
It would be a most desirable thing to have professors in each branch of 
Natural History in our universities, and to make it indispensable, in order 
to the obtaining of any degree in physic, that the candidate should have 
attended these lectures. We may judge from the good effects that the 
arts have derived from the present very general attention to Chemistry 
how beneficial would be the consequence if Entomology were equally 
cultivated; and I shall conclude this paragraph with what I think may be 
laid down as an incontrovertible axiom :—That the profit we derive from 
the works of creation will be in proportion to the accuracy of our know- 
ledge of them and their properties. 

I trust I have now said enough to convince you and every thinking man 
that the study of insects, so far from being vain, idle, trifling, or unprofita- 
ble, may be attended with very important advantages to mankind, and 
ought at least to be placed upon a level with many other branches of 
science, against which such accusations are never alledged. 


_ 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 57 


But I must not conceal from you that there are objectors who will still 
return to the charge. They will say, “‘ We admit that the pursuits of the 
entomologist are important when he directs his views to the destruction of 
noxious insects; the discovery of new ones likely to prove beneficial to 
man ; and to practical experiments upon their medical and economical 
properties. But where are the entomologists that in fact pursue this 
course? Do they not in reality wholly disregard the economical depart- 
ment of their science, and content themselves with making as large a 
collection of species as possible; ascertaining the names of such as are 
already described ; describing new ones ; and arranging the whole in their 
cabinets under certain families and genera? And can a study with these 
sole ends in view deserve a better epithet than trifling? Even if the 
entomologist advance a step further, and invent a new system for the dis- 
tribution of all known insects, can his laborious undertaking be deemed 
any other than busy idleness? What advantage does the world derive 
from having names given to ten or twenty thousand insects, of which 
numbers are not bigger than a pin’s head, and of which probably not a 
hundredth part will ever be of any use to mankind?” 

Now in answer to this supposed objection, which I have stated as 
forcibly as I am able, and which, as it may be, and often is, urged against 
every branch of Natural History as at present studied, well deserves a 
full consideration, I might in the first place deny that those who have the 
highest claim to rank as entomologists do confine their views to the 
systematic department of the science to the neglect of economical obsery- 
ations ; and in proof of my assertion, I might refer abroad to a Linné, a 
Reaumur, a De Geer, a Huber, and various other names of the highest 
reputation; and at home toa Ray, a Lister, a Derham, a Marsham, a 
Curtis, a Clark, a Roxburgh, &c. But I do not wish to conceal that 
though a large proportion of entomologists direct their views much further 
than to the mere nomenclature of their science, there exists a great num- 
ber, probably the majority, to whom the objection will strictly apply. 
Now I contend, and shall next endeavor to prove, that entomologists of 
this description are devoting their time to a most valuable end ; and are 
conferring upon society a benefit incalculably greater than that derived 
from the labors of many of those who assume the privilege of despising 
their pursuit. 

Even in favor of the mere butterfly-hunter—he who has no higher aim 
than that of collecting a picture of Lepidoptera, and is attached to insects 
solely by their beauty or singularity,—it would not be difficult to say 
much. Can it be necessary to declaim on the superiority of a people 
amongst whom intellectual pleasures, however trifling, are preferred to 
mere animal gratifications? Is it a thing to be lamented that some of 
the Spitalfields weavers occupy their leisure hours in searching for the 
Adonis butterfly (Polyommatus Adonis), and others of the more splendid 
Lepidoptera', instead of spending them in playing at skittles or in an ale- 
house? Or is there in truth any thing more to be wished than that the 
cutlers of Sheffield were accustomed thus toemploy their Saint Mondays ; 
and to recreate themselves after a hard day’s work, by breathing the pure 


1 Haworth Lepid. Brit. 44. 57. 


58 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


air of their surrounding hills, while in search of this ‘“Guntaxed and undis- 
puted game!;” and that more of the Norwich weavers were fond of 
devoting their vacant time to plant-hunting, like Joseph Fox, recorded by 
Sir James Smith as the first raiser of a Lycopodium from seed ?? 

Still more easy is it to advocate the cause of another description of 
entomologists—the general collectors. These, though not concerning 
themselves with the system, contribute most essentially to its advance- 
ment. We cannot expect that princes, noblemen, and others of high 
rank or large fortune who collect insects, should be able or willing to give 
up the time necessary for studying them systematically ; but their museums 
being accessible to the learned entomologist, afford him the use of trea- 
sures which his own limited funds or opportunities could never have 
brought together. As to others of less consequence that content them- 
selves with the title of collectors, they also have their use. Having 
devoted themselves to this one department, they become more expert at it 
than the philosopher who combines deep researches with the collection of 
objects ; and thus are many species brought together for the use of the 
systematist, that would otherwise remain unknown. 

But to proceed to the defence of systematic entomologists.—These 
may be divided into two great classes: the first comprising those who 
confine themselves to ascertaining the names of the insects they collect ; 
the second, those who, in addition, publish descriptions of new species, 
new arrangements of intricate genera, or extrications of entangled syno- 
nyms, and who, in other respects, actively contribute to the perfection of 
the system. 

Now with regard to the first class, setting aside what may be urged in 
behalf of the study of insects considered as the work of the Creator, it is 
easy to show that, even with such restricted views, their pursuit is as com- 
mendable, and as useful both to themselves and the community, as many 
of those on which we look with the greatest respect. 'To say the least 
in their favor, they amuse themselves innocently, which is quite as much 
as can be urged for persons who recreate their leisure hours with music, 
painting, or desultory reading. They furnish themselves with an unfail- 
ing provision of that “grand panacea for the tedium vite’’—employ- 
ment—no unimportant acquisition, when even Gray was forced to ex- 


1 Oft have I smiled the happy pride to see 
Of humble tradesmen in their evening glee, 
When of some pleasing fancied good possest, 
Each grew alert, was busy and was blest : 
Whether the call-bird yield the hour’s delight, 
Or magnified in microscope the mite; 
Or whether tumblers, croppers, carriers seize 
The gentle mind; they rule it and they please. 
There is my friend the weaver; strong desires 
Reign in his breast; ’tis beauty he admires: 
See to the shady grove he wings his way, 
And feels in hope the rapture of the day— 
Eager he looks, and soon, to glad his eyes, 
From the sweet bower by nature form’d arise 

Bright troops of virgin moths, and fresh-born butterflies. 

* * * * 


He fears no bailiff’s wrath, no baron’s blame ; 
His is untax’d and undisputed game. 
Crabbe’s Borough, p. 110. 
2 Linn. Trans. ii. 315. 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 59 


claim, with reference to the necessity of ‘“ always having something going 
forward” towards the enjoyment of life, “‘ Happy they who can create a 
rose-tree or erect a honey-suckle; that can watch the brood of a hen, or 
see a fleet of their own ducklings launch into the water!” And, like 
the preceding class, they collect valuable materials for the use of more 
active laborers, being thus at least upon a par with the majority of book- 
collectors and antiquaries. 

But this is the smallest half of the value of their pursuit. With what 
view is the study of the mathematics so generally recommended? Not 
certainly for any practical purpose—not to make the bulk of those who 
attend to them astronomers or engineers. But simply to exercise and 
strengthen the intellect—to give the mind a habit of attention and of 
investigation. Now for all these purposes, if I do not go so far as to 
assert that the mere ascertaining of the names of insects is equal to the 
study of the mathematics, I have no hesitation in affirming that it is nearly 
as effectual; and with respect to giving a habit of minute attention, 
superior. Such is the intricacy of nature, such the imperfection of our 
present arrangements, that the discovery of the name of almost any insect 
is a problem, calling in all cases for acuteness and attention, and in some 
for a balancing of evidence, a calculation of the chances of error as ardu- 
ous as are required in a perplexed law-case, and a process of ratiocination 
not less strict than that which satisfies the mathematician. In proof of 
which assertion I need only refer any competent judge to the elaborate 
disquisitions of Laspeyres, called for by one work alone on the lepidop- 
terous insects of a single district—the Wiener Verzeichniss, which occupy 
above two hundred octavo pages”, and must have cost the learned author 
nearly as much labor of mind as the Ductor Dubitantium did Bishop 
Taylor. 

Do not apprehend that this occasional perplexity is any deduction from 
the attractions of the science: though in itself, in some respects, an evil, 
it forms in fact to many minds one of the chief of them. The pursuit 
of truth, in whatever path, affords pleasure: but the interest would cease 
if she never gave us trouble in the chase. Horace Walpole used to say, 
that from a child he could never bring himself to attend to any book that 
was not full of proper names ; and the satisfaction which he felt in dry 
investigations concerning noble authors, and obscure painters, is expe- 
rienced by many an entomologist who spends hours in disentangling the 
synonymy of a doubtful species. Nor would it be easy to prove that the 
wordy researches of the one are not to every practical purpose as valu- 
able as those of the other. We smile at the Frenchman told of by 
Menage, that was so enraptured with the study of heraldry and genealogy 
as to lament the hard case of our foxefather Adam, who could not possi- 
bly amuse himself with such investigations.° But many an entomologist 
who has felt the delicious sensation attendant upon the indisputable ascer- 
taimment of an insect’s name after a long search, will feel inclined to 
indulge in similar grief for the unhappy lot of his successors, when all 
shall be smooth sailing in the science. 

But in behalf of those who are more eminently entitled to be called 


? Letter to Dr. Wharton. Mason’s Life of Gray, p. 28. 
? Illig. Mag. ii. 33. iv. 3. 3 Andrew’s Anecdotes, 152. 


60 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


entomologists—those who, not content with collecting and investigating 
insects, occupy themselves in naming and describing such as have been 
before unobserved ; in instituting new genera or reforming the old; and, 
to say all in one word, in perfecting the system of the science,—still 
higher claims can be urged. Suppose that at this moment our dictionaries 
of the French and German languages were so very defective, that we 
were unable by the use of them to profit from the discoveries of their 
philosophers ; the labors of a Michaelis being a sealed book to our theo- 
logist, and those of La Place to our astronomers. On this supposition, 
would not one of the most important literary undertakings be the compi- 
lation of more perfect dictionaries, and would not the humblest contributor 
to such an end be deemed most meritoriously engaged? Now precisely 
what an accurate dictionary of a particular language is towards enabling 
the world to participate in the discoveries published in that language, is a 
system of Entomology towards enabling mankind to derive advantage 
from any discoveries relative to insects. A good system of insects, con- 
taining all the known species arranged in appropriate genera, families, 
orders and classes, is in fact a dictionary, putting it within our power to 
ascertain the name of any given insect, and thus to learn what has been 
observed respecting its properties and history, as readily as we determine 
the meaning of a new word ina lexicon. In order to impress upon you 
more forcibly the absolute need of such a system, I must enter into still 
further detail. 

There is scarcely a country in which several thousand insects may not 
be found. Now, without some scientific arrangemept, how is the observer 
of a new fact respecting any one of them to point out to distant countries, 
and to posterity, the particular insect he had in view? Suppose an observer 
in England were to find a certain beetle which he had demonstrated to be a 
specific for consumption ; and that it was necessary that this insect, which 
there was reason to believe was common in every part of the world, should 
be administered in a recent state. Would he not be anxious to proclaim the 
happy discovery to sufferers in all quarters of the globe? As his remedy 
would not admit of transportation, he would have no other means than by 
describing it. Now the question is, whether, on the supposition that no 
system of Entomology existed, he would be able to do this, so as to be 
intelligible to a physician in North America, for instance, eager to adminis- 
ter so precious a medicine to his expiring patient? It would evidently be 
of no use to say that the specific was a beetle: there are thousands of 
different beetles in North America. Nor would size or color be any 
better guide: there are hundreds of beetles of the same size and the same 
color. Even the plant on which it fed would be no sufficient clue ; for many 
insects, resembling each other to an unpractised eye, feed on the same plant, 
and the same insect in different countries feeds upon different plants. His 
only resource, then, would be a colored figure and full description of it. 
But every entomologist knows that there exist insects perfectly distinct, 
yet so nearly resembling each other, that no engraving nor any language 
other than that strictly scientific can possibly discriminate them. After all, 
therefore, the chances are that our discoverer’s remedy, invaluable as it 
might be, must be confined to his own immediate neighborhood, or to those 
who came to receive personal information from him. But with what ease 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 61 


is it made known when a system of’ the science exists! If the insect be 
already described, he has but to mention its generic and trivial names, and 
by aid of two words alone, every entomologist, though in the most distant 
region—whether a Swede, a German, or a Frenchman—whether a native 
of Europe, of Asia, of America, or of Africa, knows instantly the very 
species that is meant, and can that moment ascertain whether it be within 
his reach. If the species be new and undescribed, it is only necessary to 
indicate the genus to which it belongs, the species to which it is most nearly 
allied, and to describe it in scientific terms, which may be done in few 
words, and it can at once be recognized by every one acquainted with the 
science. 

You will think it hardly credible that there should be so much difficulty 
in describing an insect intelligibly without the aid of system; but an argu- 
mentum ad hominem, supported by some other facts, will, I conjecture, 
render this matter more comprehensible. You have doubtless, like every 
one else, in the showery days of summer, felt no little rage at the flies, 
which at such times take the liberty of biting our legs, and contrive to 
make a comfortable meal through the interstices of their silken or cotton 
coverings. Did it, 1 pray, ever enter into your conception that these 
bloodthirsty tormentors are a different species from those flies which you 
are wont to see extending the lips of their little proboscis to a piece of 
sugar or a drop of wine? I dare say not. But the next time you have 
sacrificed one of the former to your just vengeance catch one of the latter 
and compare them. I question if, after the narrowest comparison, you 
will not still venture a wager that they are the very same species. Yet 
you would most certainly lose your bet. They are not even of the same 
genus—one belonging to the genus Musca (M. domestica), and the other 
to the genus Stomoxys (JS. calcitrans) ; and on a second examination you 
will find that, however alike in most respects, they differ widely in the 
shape of their proboscis ; that of the Stomoxys being a horny sharp-pointed 
weapon, capable of piercing the flesh, while the soft blunt organ of the 
Musca is perfectly incompetent to any such operation. In future, while 
you no longer load the whole race of the house-fly with the execrations 
which properly belong to a quite different tribe, you will cease being 
surprised that an ordinary description should be insufficient to discriminate 
an insect. It is to this insufficiency that we must attribute our ignorance 
of so many of the insects mentioned by the older naturalists, previously to 
the systematic improvements of the immortal Linné: and to the same 
cause we must refer the impossibility of determining what species are 
alluded to in the accounts of many modern travelers and agriculturists who 
have been ignorant of Entomology as a science. Instances without num- 
ber of this impossibility might be adduced, but I shall confine myself 
to two. 

One of the greatest pests of Surinam, and other low regions in South 
America, is the insect called in the West Indies, where it is also trouble- 
some, the chigoe (Pulex penetrans), a minute species, to the attacks of 
which [I shall again have occasion to advert. This inseet is mentioned by 
almost all the writers on the countries where it is found. Not less than 
eight or ten of them have endeavored to give a full description of it, and 


6 


62 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


some of them have even figured it; and yet, strange to say, it was not 
certainly known whether it was a flea (Pulex, L.), a louse (Pediculus, L.), 
or a mite (Acarus, L.), till a competent naturalist undertook to investigate 
its history, and in a short paper in the Swedish Transactions’ proved that 
Linné was not mistaken in referring it to the former tribe, with which also 
the more recent investigations of an eminent British Entomologist, I. O. 
Westwood Esq., have shown that it must be arranged, though, from some 
difference in its structure as well as habits, he has adopted the generic 
name (slightly altered) proposed by the Rev. L. Guilding, and has called 
it Sarcopsylla penetrans.” 

The second instance of the insufficiency of popular description is even 
more extraordinary. In 1788 an alarm was excited in this country by 
the probability of importing, in cargoes of wheat from North America, 
the insect known by the name of the Hessian fly, whose dreadful ravages 
will be adverted to hereafter. However the insect tribes are in general 
despised, they had on that occasion ample revenge. The privy council 
sat day after day anxiously debating what measures should be adopted to 
ward off the danger of a calamity more to be dreaded, as they well knew, 
than the plague or pestilence. Expresses were sent off in all directions 
to the officers of the customs at the different outports respecting the 
examination of cargoes—despatches written to the ambassadors in France, 
Austria, Prussia, and America, to gain that information of the want of 
which they were now so sensible; and so important was the business 
deemed, that the minutes of council and the documents collected from all 
quarters fill upwards of two hundred octavo pages.> Fortunately England 
contained one illustrious naturalist, the most authentic source of informa- 
tion on all subjects which connect Natural History with Agriculture and 
the Arts, to whom the privy council had the wisdom to apply ; and it was 
by Sir Joseph Bank’s entomological knowledge, and through his sugges- 
tions, that they were at length enabled to form some kind of judgment on 
the subject. ‘This judgment was, after all, however, very imperfect. As 
Sir Joseph Banks had never seen the Hessian fly, nor was it described in 
any entomological system, he called for facts respecting its nature, propa- 
gation, and economy, which could be had only from America. These 
were obtained as speedily as possible, and consist of numerous letters from 
individuals, essays from magazines, the reports of the British minister 
there, &c. &c. One would have supposed that from these statements, 
many of them drawn up by farmers who had lost entire crops by the insect, 
which they profess to have examined in every stage, the requisite informa- 
tion might have been acquired. So far, however, was this from being the 
case, that many of the writers seemed ignorant whether the insect be a 
moth, a fly, or what they term a bug. And though from the concurrent 
testimony of several, its being a two-winged fly seemed pretty accurately 
ascertained, no intelligible description was given from which any naturalist 
could infer to what genus it belonged, or whether it was a known species. 
With regard to the history of its propagation and economy the statements 
were so various and contradictory, that though he had such a mass of 


1 Swartz in Kongl. Vet. Ac. Nya. band. ix. 40. 
2 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 199—203. 3 Young’s Annals of Agriculture, xi. 406. 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 63 


materials before him, Sir Joseph Banks was unable to reach any satisfac- 
tory conclusion.! 

Nothing can more incontrovertibly demonstrate the importance of 
studying Entomology as a science than this fact. Those observations, to 
which thousands of unscientific sufferers proved themselves incompetent, 
would have been readily made by one entomologist well versed in his science. 
He would at once have determined the order and genus of the insect, and 
whether it was a known or new species; and ina twelvemonth at furthest 
he would have ascertained in what manner it made its attacks, and whether 
it were possible that it might be transmitted along with grain into a foreign 
country ; and on these solid data he could have satisfactorily pointed out 
the best mode of eradicating the pest, or preventing the extension of its 
ravages. 

But it is not merely in travelers and popular observers that the want of 
a systematic knowledge of Entomology is so deplorable. A great portion 
of the labors of the profoundest naturalists has been from a similar cause 
lost to the world. Many of the insects concerning which Reaumur and 
Bonnet have recorded the most interesting circumstances, cannot, from 
their neglect of system, be at this day ascertained.? The former, as 
Beckmann? states on the authority of his letters, was before his death 
sensible of his great error in this respect; but Bonnet, with singular 
inconsistency, constantly maintained the inutility of system, even on an 
occasion when, from his ignorance of it, Sir James Smith, speaking of his 
experiments on the barberry, found it quite impossible to make him com- 
prehend what plant he referred to.* 

So great is the importance of a systematic arrangement of insects. Yet 
no such arrangement has hitherto been completed. Various fragments 
towards it, indeed, exist. But the work itself is in the state of a dictionary 
wanting a considerable proportion of the words of the language it professes 
to explain; and placing those which it does contain in an order often so 
arbitrary and defective, that it is difficult to discover even the page con- 
taining the word you are in search of. Can it be denied, then, that they 
are most meritoriously employed who devote themselves to the removal 
of these defects—to the perfecting of the system—and to clearing the path 
of future economical or physiological observers from the obstructions which — 
now beset it? And who that knows the vast extent of the science, and 
how impossible it is that a divided attention can embrace the whole, will 
contend that it is not desirable that some laborers in the field of literature 
should devote themselves entirely and exclusively to this object? Who 
that is aware of the importance of the comprehensive views of a Fabricius, 
an Illiger, or a Latreille, and the infinite saving of time of which their 
inquiries will be productive to their followers, will dispute their claim to 
rank amongst the most honorable in science ? 


? The American Entomologist Say, was the first who satisfactorily determined the species 
and genus of the insect in question. Say on Cecidomyia Destructor, in Journ. Acad. Nat. 
Sc. Philadelph., i.; and Kirby in Loudon’s Mag. Nat. Hist., i. 

* No one knew Reaumur’s Abeiile Tapissiere, until Latreille, happily combining system 
with attention to the economy of insects, proved it to be a new species—his Megachile Pa- 
paveris.— Hist. de Fourmis, 297. 

3 Bibliothek. vii. 310. 

4 Tour on the Continent, iii, 159. 


64 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


II. No objection, I think, now remains against addicting ourselves to 
entomological pursuits, but that which seems to have the most weight with 
you, and which indeed is calculated to make the deepest impression upon 
the best minds—I mean the charge of inhumanity and cruelty. That the 
science of Entomology cannot be properly cultivated without the death of 
its objects, and that this is not to be effected without putting them to some 
pain, must be allowed; but that this substantiates the charge of cruelty, I 
altogether deny. Cruelty is an unnecessary infliction of suffering, when 
a person is fond of torturing or destroying God’s creatures from mere wan- 
tonness, with no useful end in view; or when, if their death be useful and 
lawful, be has recourse to circuitous modes of killing them, where direct 
ones would answer equally well. This is cruelty, and this with you I 
abominate ; but not the infliction of death when a just occasion calls for it. 

They who see no cruelty in the sports of the field, as they are called, 
can never, of course, consistently alledge such a charge against the entomo- 
logist ; the tortures of wounded birds, of fish that swallow the hook and 
break the line, or of the hunted hare, being, beyond comparison, greater 
than those of insects destroyed in the usual mode. With respect to utili- 
ty, the sportsman who, though he adds indeed to the general stock of food, 
makes amusement his primary object, must surely yield the palm to the 
Entomologist, who adds to the general stock of mental food, often supplies 
hints for useful improvements in the arts and sciences, and the objects of 
whose pursuit, unlike those of the former, are preserved, and may be 
applied to use for many years. 

But in the view even of those few who think inhumanity chargeable 
upon the sportsman, it will be easy to place considerations which may 
rescue the entomologist from such reproof. It is well known that, in pro- 
portion as we descend in the scale of being, the sensibility of the objects 
that constitute it diminishes. ‘The tortoise walks about after losing its 
head ; and the polypus, so far from being injured by the application of the 
knife, thereby acquires an extension of existence. Insensibility almost 
equally great may be found in the insect world. This, indeed, might be 
inferred @ priori ; since Providence seems to have been more prodigal of 
insect life than of that of any other order of creatures, animalcula perhaps 
alone excepted. No part of the creation is exposed to the attack of so 
many enemies, or subject to so many disasters ; so that the few individuals 
of each kind which enrich the valued museum of the entomologist, many 
of which are dearer to him than gold or gems, are snatched from the 
ravenous maw of some bird or fish or rapacious insect—would have been 
driven by the winds into the waters and drowned, or trodden underfoot by 
man or beast; for it is not easy, in some parts of the year, to set foot to 
the ground without crushing these minute animals; and thus also, instead 
of being buried in oblivion, they have a kind of immortality conferred 
upon them. Can it be believed that the beneficent Creator, whose tender 
mercies are over all his works, would expose these helpless beings to such 
innumerable enemies and injuries, were they endued with the same sense 
of pain and irritability of nerve with the higher orders of animals ? 

But this inference is reduced to certainty, when we attend to the facts 
which insects every day present to us, proving that the very converse of 
our great poet’s conclusion, as usually interpreted, 


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 65 


The poor beetle that we tread upon 
In corporeal sufferance finds a pang as great 
As when a giant dies, 
must be regarded as nearer the truth. Not to mention the peculiar or- 
ganization of insects, which strongly favors the idea I am inculcating, but 
which will be considered more properly in another place, their sang-froid 
upon the loss of their limbs, even those that we account most necessary 
‘to life, irrefragably proves that the pain they suffer cannot be very acute. 
Had a giant lest an arm or a leg, or were a sword or spear run through 
his bedy, he would feel no great inclinaticn for renning about, dancing, or 
eating ; yet a crane-fly (Tipula) will leave half its legs in the hands of 
an unlucky boy who has endeavored to catch it, and will fly here and 
there with as much agility and unconcern as if nothing had happened to 
it; and an insect impaled upon a pin will often devour its prey with as 
much avidity as when at liberty. Were a giant eviscerated, his body 
divided in the middle, or his head cut off, it would be all over with him; 
he would move no more; he would be dead to the calls of hunger, or the 
emotions of fear, anger, or love. Not so our insects. I have seen the 
common cock-chafer walk about with apparent indifference after some bird 
had nearly emptied its body of its viscera: an humble-bee will eat honey 
with greediness though deprived of its abdomen; and I myself lately saw 
an ant, which had been: brought out of the nest by its comrades, walk 
when deprived of its head. ‘The head of a wasp will attempt to bite 
after it is separated from the rest of the body; and the abdomen under 
similar circumstances, if the finger be moved to it, will attempt to sting. 
And, what is more extraordinary, the headless trunk of a male Mantis has 
been known to unite itself to the other sex?; and a dragon-fly to eat its 
own tail, as we learn from J. F. Stephens, Esq., author of the valuable 
“Tilustrations of British Entomology,” while entomologizing near Whit- 
tleseamere, having directed the tail of one of these insects which he had 
caught to its mouth, to make an experiment whether the known voracity 
of the tribe would lead it to bite itself, saw to his astonishment that it 
actually bit off and ate the four terminal segments of its body, and then 
by accident escaping flew away as briskly as ever!? These facts, out of 
hundreds that might be adduced, are surely sufficient to prove that insects 
do not experience the same acute sensations of pain with the higher orders 
of animals, which Providence has endowed with more ample means of 
avoiding them. And since they were to be exposed so universally to 
attack and injury, this is a most merciful provision in their favor; for, were 
it otherwise, considering the wounds, and dismemberments, and lingering 
deaths that insects often suffer, what a vast increase would there be of the 
general sum of pain and misery! You will now, I think, allow that the 
most humane person need not hesitate a moment whether he shall devote 
himself to the study of Entomology on account of any cruelty attached 
to the pursuit. 
* Shakspere’s intention, however, in this passage, was evidently not, as is often supposed, 
to excite compassion for the insect, but to prove that 
The sense of Death is most in apprehension, 


the actual pang being trifling.— Measure for Measure, Act iii. Scene 1. 
2 Dr. Smith’s Tour, i. 162. Journ. de Phys. xxv. 336. 
3 Stephens in Ent, Mag. i. 518. 


6* 


66 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 


But if some morbid sentimentalist should still exclaim, “ Oh! but I 
cannot persuade myself, even for scientific purposes, t® inflict the slightest 
degree of pain upon the most insensible of creatures—” Pray, sir or 
madam, I would ask, should your green-house be infested by Aphidesy-or 
your grapery by the semianimate Coccus, would this extreme of tender- 
ness induce you to restrict your gardener from destroying them? Are you 
willing to deny yourselves these unnecessary gratifications, and to resign 
your favorite flowers and fruit at the call of your fine feelings? Or will 
you give up the shrimps, which by their relish enable you to play a better 
part with your bread and butter at breakfast, and thus, instead of adding 
to it, contribute to diminish the quantity of food? If not, I shall only 
desire you to recollect that, for a mere personal indulgence, you cause the 
death of an infinitely greater number of animals than all the entomologists 
in the world destroy for the promotion of science.” 

To these considerations, which I have no doubt you will think conclu- 
sive as to the unreasonableness and inconsistency of the objections made 
against the study of Entomology on the score of cruelty, I shall only 
add that I do not intend them as any apology for other than the most 
speedy and least painful modes of destroying insects. Every degree of 
unnecessary pain becomes cruelty, which I need not assure you I abhor ; 
and from my own observations, however ruthlessly the entomologist may 
seem to devote the few specimens wanted for sciéntific purposes to destruc- 
tion, no one in ordinary circumstances is less prodigal of insect life. For 
my own part, I question whether the drowning individuals, which I have 
saved from destruction, would not far out-number all that I have ever sacri- 
ficed to science. ' 

My next letter will be devoted to the metamorphoses of insects, a 
subject on which some previous explanation is necessary to enable you 
to understand those distinctions between their different states which will 
be perpetually alluded to in the course of our correspondence ; and having 
thus cleared the way, I shall afterwards proceed to the consideration of 
the znjuries and benefits of which insects are the cause. 

I am, &c. 


67 


LETTER Il. 
METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS. 


Wenz a naturalist to announce to the world the discovery of an animal 
which for the first five years of its life existed in the form of a serpent; 
which then penetrating into the earth, and weaving a shroud of pure silk 
of the finest texture, contracted itself within this covering into a body 
without external mouth or limbs, and resembling, more than any thing else, 
an Egyptian mummy ; and which, lastly, after remaining in this state 
without food and without motion for three years longer, should at the end 
of that period burst its silken cerements, struggle through its earthy cover- 
ing, and start into day a winged bird,—what think you would be the 
sensation excited by this strange piece of intelligence? After the first 
doubts of its truth were dispelled, what astonishment would succeed ! 
Amongst the learned, what surmises!—what investigations! Amongst 
the vulgar, what eager curiosity and amazement! All would be interested 
in the history of such an unheard-of phenomenon ; even the most torpid 
would flock to the sight of such a prodigy. 

But, you ask, “'To what do all these improbable suppositions tend ?” 
Simply to rouse your attention to the metamorphoses of the insect world, 
almost as strange and surprising, to which I am now about to direct your view, 
—niracles which, though scarcely surpassed in singularity by all that poets 
have feigned, and though actually wrought every day beneath our eyes, 
are, because of their commonness, and the minuteness of the objects, un- 
heeded alike by the ignorant and the learned. 

The butterfly which amuses you with his aérial excursions, one while 
extracting nectar from the tube of the honeysuckle, and then, the very 
image of fickleness, flying to a rose as if to contrast the hue of its wings 
with that of the flower on which it reposes, did not come into the world as 
you now behold it. At its first exclusion from the egg, and for some 
months of its existence afterwards, it was a worm-like caterpillar, crawl- 
ing upon sixteen short legs, greedily devouring leaves with two jaws, and 
seeing by means of twelve eyes so minute as to be nearly imperceptible 
without the aid of a microscope. You now view it furnished with wings 
capable of rapid and extensive flights: of its sixteen feet ten have disap- 
peared, and the remaining six are in most respects wholly unlike those to 
which they have succeeded ; its jaws have vanished, and are replaced by 
a curled-up proboscis suited only for sipping liquid sweets ; the form of its 
head is entirely changed,—two long horns project from its upper surface ; 
and, instead of twelve invisible eyes, you behold two, very large, and 
composed of at least seventeen thousand convex lenses, each supposed to 
be a distinct and effective eye! 

Were you to push your examination further, and by dissection to com- 
pare the internal conformation of the caterpillar with that of the butterfly, 


68 METAMORPHOSES. 


you would witness changes even more extraordinary. In the former you 
would find some thousands of muscles, which in the fatter are replaced by 
others of a form and structure entirely different. Nearly the whole body 
of the caterpillar is occupied by a capacious stomach. In the butterfly 
this has become converted into an almost imperceptible thread-like viscus ; 
and the abdomen is now filled by two large packets of eggs, or other 
organs not visible in the first state. In the former, two spirally-convoluted 
tubes were filled with a silky gum; in the latter, both tubes and silk have 
almost totally vanished ; and changes equally great have taken place in 
the economy and structure of the nerves and other organs. 

What a surprising transformation! Nor was this all. The change 
from one form to the other was not direct. An intermediate state not 
less singular intervened. After casting its skin even to its very jaws 
several times, and attaining its full growth, the caterpillar attached itself 
to a leaf by a silken girth. Its body greatly contracted: its skin once 
more split asunder, and disclosed an oviform mass, without exterior mouth, 
eyes, or limbs, and exhibiting no other symptom of life than a slight 
motion when touched. In this state of death-like torpor, and without 
tasting food, the insect existed for several months, until at length the tomb 
burst, and out of a case not more than an inch long, and a quarter of an 
inch in diameter, proceeded the butterfly before you, which covers a 
surface of nearly four inches square. 

Almost every insect which you see has undergone a transformation as 
singular and surprising, though varied in many of its circumstances. ‘That 
active little fly, now an unbidden guest at your table', whose delicate 
palate selects your choicest viands, one while extending his proboscis to 
the margin of a drop of wine, and then gaily flying to take a more solid 
repast from a pear or a peach; now gamboling with his comrades in the 
air, now gracefully currying his furled wings with his taper feet, was but 
the other day a disgusting grub, without wings, without legs, without eyes, 
wallowing, well pleased, in the midst of a mass of excrement. 

The “ grey-coated gnat,’” whose humming salutation, while she makes 
her airy circles about your bed, gives terrific warning of the sanguinary 
operation in which she is ready to engage, was a few hours ago the inhabi- 
tant of a stagnant pool, more in shape like a fish than an insect. * Then 
to have been taken out of the water would have been speedily fatal ; now 
it could as little exist in any other element than air. ‘Then it breathed 
through its tail; now through openings in its sides. Its shapeless head, 
in that period of its existence, is now exchanged for one adorned with 
elegantly tufted antennz, and furnished, instead of jaws, with an apparatus 
more artfully constructed than the cupping-glasses of the phlebotomist— 
an apparatus, which, at the same time that it strikes in the lancets, com- 
poses a tube for pumping up the flowing blood. 

The “shard-born beetle,” whose ‘sullen horn,’ as he directs his 
“ droning flight” close past your ears in your evening walk, calling up in 
poetic association the lines in which he has been alluded to by Shakspere, 
Collins, and Gray, was not in his infancy an inhabitant of air; the first 
period of his life being spent in gloomy solitude, as a grub, under the sur- 


1 “Coenis etiam non vocatus ut Musca advolo.” Aristophon in Pythagorista apud 
Atheneum. (Mouffet, 56.) 


METAMORPHOSES. 69 


face of the earth. The shapeless maggot, which you scarcely fail to meet 
with in some one of every handful of nuts you crack, would not always 
have groveled in that humble state. If your unlucky intrusion upon its 
vaulted dwelling had not left it to perish in the wide world, it would have 
continued to reside there until its full growth had been attained. Then it 
would have gnawed itself an opening, and, having entered the earth, and 
passed a few months in a state of inaction, would at length have emerged 
an elegant beetle furnished with a slender and very long ebony beak: two 
wings, and two wing-cases, ornamented with yellow bands ; six feet; and 
in every respect unlike the worm from which it proceeded. 

That bee but it is needless to multiply instances, a sufficient number 
has been adduced to show, that the apparently extravagant supposition 
with which I set out may be paralleled in the insect world ; and that the 
metamorphoses of its inhabitants are scarcely less astonishing than would 
be the transformation of a serpent into an eagle. 

These changes I do not purpose explaining minutely in this place: they 
will be adverted to more fully in subsequent letters. Here I mean merely 
to give you such a general view of the subject as shall impress you with 
its claims to attention, and such an explanation of the states through 
which insects pass, and of the different terms made use of to designate 
them in each, as shall enable you to comprehend the frequent allusions 
which must be made to them in our future correspondence. 

The states through which insects pass are four: the egg; the larva ; 
the pupa ; and the imago. 

The first of these need not be here adverted to. In the second, or 
immediately after the exclusion from the egg, they are soft, without wings, 
and in shape usually somewhat like worms. This Linné called the larva 
state, and an insect when in it a larva, adopting a Latin word signifying a 
mask, because he considered the real insect while under this form to be as 
it were masked. In the English language we have no common term that 
applies to the second state of all insects, though we have several for that 
of different tribes. Thus we call the colored and often hairy larve of 
butterflies and moths caterpillars ; the white and more compact larve of 
flies, many beetles, &c. grubs or maggots' ; and the depressed larve of 
many other insects worms. 'The two former terms I shall sometimes use 
in a similar sense, rejecting the last, which ought to be confined to true 
vermes ; but I shall more commonly adopt Linné’s term, and call insects 
in their second state, larve. 

In this period of their life, during which they eat voraciously and cast 
their skin several times, insects live a shorter or longer period, some only 
a few days or weeks, others several months or years. They then cease 
eating ; fix themselves in a secure place; their skin separates once more 
and discloses an oblong body, and they have now attained the third state 
of their existence. 


1 Gentils, or gentles, is a synonymous word employed by our old authors, but is now 
obsolete, except with anglers. Thus Tusser, in a passage pointed out to me by Sir Joseph 
Banks :— 


““Rewerd not thy sheep when ye take off his cote 
With twitches and patches as brode as a grote; 
Let not such ungentlenesse happen to thine, 
Least fly with her gentils do make it to pine.” 


70 METAMORPHOSES. 


From the swathed appearance of most insects in this state, in which 
they do not badly resemble in miniature a child trussed up like a mummy 
in swaddling clothes, according to the barbarous fashion once prevalent 
here, and still retained in many parts of the Continent, Linné has called 
it the pupa state, and an insect when under this form a pupa—terms which 
will be here adopted in the same sense. In this state, most insects eat no 
food ; are incapable of locomotion; and, if opened, seem filled with a 
watery fluid, in which no distinct organs can be traced. Externally, how- 
ever, the shape of the pupe of different tribes varies considerably, and 
different names have been applied to them. 

Those of the beetle and bee tribes are covered with a membranous 
skin, enclosing in separate and distinct sheaths the external organs, as the 
antenne, legs, and wings, which are consequently not closely applied to 
the body, but have their form for the most part clearly distinguishable. 
To these Aristotle originally gave the name of Nymphe', which was con- 
tinued by Swammerdam and other authors prior to Linné (who calls them 
incomplete pupe), and has been adopted by many English writers on 
insects. 

Butterflies, moths, and some of the two-winged tribe, are in their pupa 
state also enclosed in a similar membranous envelope; but their legs, 
antenne, and wings, are closely folded over the breast and sides ; and the 
whole body enclosed in a common case or covering of a more horny con- 
sistence, which admits a much less distinct view of the organs beneath it. 
As these pup are often tinged of a golden color, they were called from 
this circumstance chrysalides by the Greeks, and aurelie by the Romans, 
both which terms are in some measure become anglicized ; and though not 
strictly applicable to ungilded pupe, are now often given to those of all 
lepidopterous insects. These by Linné are denominated obtected pupz. 

I have said that most insects eat no food in the pupa state. This quali- 
fication is necessary, because in the metamorphoses of insects, as in all her 
other operations, nature proceeds by measured steps, and a very consider- 
able number (the tribe of locusts, cockroaches, bugs, spiders, &c.) not only 
greatly resemble the perfect insect in form, but are equally capable with it 


1 Hist. Anim. |, 5. ¢. 10. 

2 In explanation of the terms Lepidoptera, Lepidopterous, Coleoptera, &c., which will fre- 
quently occur in the following pages before coming regularly to difinitions, it is necessary 
here to state that they have reference to the names given by entomologists to the different 
orders or tribes of insects, as under :— 

1. Coleoptera, consisting of Beetles. Plate I. Fig. 1—6. 

2. Strepsiptera, of the genera Xenos and Stylops. Plate Il. Fig. 1. 

3. Dermaptera, of the Earwigs. Plate I. Fig. 7. 

4. Orthoptera, of Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, Crickets, Spectres, Mantes, &c. 
Plate II. Fig. 2, 3. 

5. Hemiptera, consisting of Bugs, Cicade, Water-scorpions, Water-boat-men, Plant-lice, 
Cochineal Insects, &c. Plate Il. Fig. 4, 5. 

6. Trichoptera, consisting of the flies produced by the various species of Case-morms, 
Phryganea, L. Plate Ill. Fig. 4. ; 

7. Lepidoptera, consisting of Butterflies, Hawkmoths, and Moths. Plate Il. Fig. 1—3. 

8. Neuroptera, consisting of Dragon-flies, Ant-lions, Ephemera, &c. Plate III. Fig. 5, 6. 

9. Hymenoptera, consisting of Bees, Wasps, and other insects armed with a sting or ovi- 
positor, and its valves. Plate IV. Fig. 1—3. 

10. Diptera, consisting of Flies, Gnats, and other two-winged insects, Plate IV. Fig. 4, 5. . 
Plate V. Fig. 1. 

11. Aphaniptera, consisting of the Fleatribe. Plate V. Fig. 2. 

12. Aptera, — of Mites, Lice, &c. Plate V. Fig. 3—6. 


METAMORPHOSES. 71 


of eating and moving. As these insects, however, cast their skins at 
stated periods, and undergo changes, though slight, in their external and 
internal conformation, they are regarded also as being subject to metamor- 
phoses. ‘These pupe may be subdivided into two classes: first, those 
comprised, with some exceptions, under the Linnean Aptera, which in 
almost every respect resemble the perfect insect, and were called by Linné 
complete pupx ; and, secondly, those of the Linnean order Hemiptera, 
which resemble the perfect insect, except in having only the rudiments of 
wings, and to which the name of semi-complete pup was applied by 
Linné, and that of semi-nymphs by some other authors. ‘There is still a 
fifth kind of pupz, which are not, as in other instances, excluded from the 
skin of the larva, but remain concealed under it, and were hence called 
by Linné coarctate pupe. These, which are peculiar to flies and some 
other dipterous genera, may be termed cased-nymphs. 

When, therefore, we employ the term pupa, we refer indifferently to 
the third state of any insect, the particular order being indicated by the 
context, or an explanatory epithet. The terms chrysalis (dropping 
aurelia, which is superfluous), nymph, semi-nymph, and cased-nymph, on 
the other hand definitely pointing out the particular sort of pupa meant: 
just as in Botany, the common term pericarp applies to all seed-vessels, 
the several kinds being designated by the names of capsule, silicle, &c. 

The envelope of cased-nymphs, which is formed of the skin of the 
larva, considerably altered in form and texture, may be conveniently called 
the puparium: but to the artificial coverings of different kinds, whether 
of silk, wood, or earth, &c. which many insects of the other orders fabri- 
cate for themselves previously to assuming the pupa state, and which 
have been called by different writers, pods, cods, husks, and beans, I shall 
continue the more definite French term cocon, anglicized into cocoon. 

After remaining a shorter or longer period, some species only a few 
hours, others months, others one or more years, in the pupa state, the en- 
closed insect, now become mature in all its parts, bursts the case which 
enclosed it, quits the pupa, and enters upon the fourth and last state. 

We now see it (unless it be an apterous species) furnished with wings, 
capable of propagation, and often under a form altogether different from 
those which it has previously borne—a perfect beetle, butterfly, or other 
insect. This Linné termed the imago state, and the animal that had 
attained to it the imago ; because, having laid aside its mask, and cast off 
its swaddling bands, being no longer disguised or confined, or in any res- 
pect imperfect, it is now become a true representative or image of its 
species. ‘This state is in general referred to when an insect is spoken of 
without the restricting terms larva or pupa. 

Such being thesingularity of the transformations of insects, you will 
not think the ancients were so wholly unprovided with a show of argu- 
ment as we are accustomed to consider them, for their belief in the possi- 
bility of many of the marvelous metamorphoses which their poets recount. 
Utterly ignorant as they were of modern physiological discoveries, the 
conversion of a caterpillar into a butterfly must have been a fact sufficient 
to put to a nonplus all the sceptical oppugners of such transformations. 
And however we may smile, in this enlightened age, at the inference drawn 
not two centuries ago by Sir Theodore Mayerne, the editor of Mouffet’s 


72 METAMORPHOSES. 


work on insects, “that if animals are transmuted so may metals!,” it was 
not, in fact, with his limited knowledge on these su¥jects, so very prepos- 
terous. It is even possible that some of the wonderful tales of the an- 
cients were grafted on the changes which they observed to take place in 
insects. ‘The death and revivification of the phoenix, from the ashes of 
which, before attaining its perfect state, arose first a worm (oxwAy), in 
many of its particulars resembles what occurs in the metamorphoses of in- 
sects. Noris it very unlikely that the doctrine of the metempsychosis took 
its rise from the same source. What argument would be thought by those 
who maintained this doctrine more plausible, in favor of the transmigration of 
souls, than the seeming revivification of the dead chrysalis? What more 
probable, than that its apparent re-assumption of life should be owing to 
its receiving for tenant the soul of some criminal doomed to animate an 
insect of similar habits with those which had defiled his human tenement ?* 

At the present day, however, the transformations of insects have lost 
that excess of the marvelous, which might once have furnished arguments 
for the fictions of the ancients, and the dreams of Paracelsus. We call 
them metamorphoses and transformations, because these terms are in 
common use, and are more expressive of the sudden changes that ensue 
than any new ones. But, strictly, they ought rather to be termed a 
series of developments. A caterpillar is not, in fact, a simple but a com- 
pound animal, containing within it the germ of the future butterfly, enclos- 
ed in what will be the case of the pupa, which is itself included in the 
three or more skins, one over the other, that will successively cover the 
larva. As this increases in size these parts expand, present themselves, 
and are in turn thrown off, until at length the perfect insect, which had 
been concealed in this succession of masks, is displayed in its genuine 
form. ‘That this is the proper explanation of the phenomenon has been 
satisfactorily proved by Swammerdam, Malpighi, and other anatomists. 
The first-mentioned illustrious naturalist discovered, by accurate dissec- 
tions, not only the skins of the larva and of the pupa encased in each 
other, but within them the very butterfly itself, with its organs indeed in 
an almost fluid state, but still perfect in all its parts.? Of this fact you 
may convince yourself without Swammerdam’s skill by plunging into vine- 
gar or spirit of wine a caterpillar about to assume the pupa state, and 
letting it remain there a few days for the purpose of giving consistency to 
its parts; or by boiling it in water for a few minutes. A very rough 
dissection will then enable you to detect the future butterfly ; and you 
will find that the wings, rolled up into a sort of cord, are lodged between 
the first and second segment of the caterpillar; that the antenne and 
trunk are coiled up in front of the head; and that the legs, however diffe- 
rent their form, are actually sheathed in its legs. Malpighi discovered the 
eggs of the future moth, in the chrysalis of a silkworm only a few days 
old*, and Reaumur those of another moth (Hypogymna dispar) even in 
the caterpillar, and that seven or eight days before its change into the 
"1 Epist. Dedicat. Me. a : ; 

2 “ A priest who has drunk wine shall migrate into a moth or fly, feeding on ordure. 
who steals the gold of a priest shall pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders. If 
a man shall steal honey, he shall be born a great stinging gnat; if oil, an oil-drinking 


beetle ; if salt, acicada; if a household utensil, an ichneumon fly.” Institutes of Menu, 353. 
3 Hill’s Swamm. ii. 24. t. 37. f. 2. 4. 4 De Bombyce, 29. 


METAMORPHOSES. 73 


pupa! A caterpillar, then, may be regarded as a locomotive egg, having 
for its embryo the included butterfly, which after a certain period assimi- 
lates to itself the animal substances by which it is surrounded ; has its 
organs gradually developed; and at length breaks through the shell 
which encloses it. 

This explanation strips the subject of every thing miraculous, yet by 
no means reduces it to a simple or uninteresting operation. Our reason is 
confounded at the reflection that a larva, at first not thicker than a thread, 
includes the germs of its own triple, or sometimes octuple, teguments ; 
the case of a chrysalis, and of a butterfly, all curiously folded in each 
other; with an apparatus of vessels for breathing and digesting, of nerves 
for sensation, and of muscles for moving ; and that these various forms of 
existence will undergo their successive evolutions, by aid of a few leaves 
received into its stomach. And still less able are we to comprehend how 
this organ should at one time be capable of digesting leaves, at another only 
honey ; how one while a silky fluid should be secreted, at another none ; 
or how organs at one period essential to the existence of the insect should 
at another be cast off, and the whole system which supported them 
vanish.” 

Nor does this explanation, though it precludes the idea of that resem- 
blance, in every particular, which, at one time, was thought to obtain 
between the metamorphosis of insects, especially of the Lepidoptera order, 
and the resurrection of the body, do away that general analogy which 
cannot fail to strike every one who at all considers the subject. Even 
Swammerdam, whose observations have proved that the analogy is not so 
complete as had been imagined, speaking of the metamorphosis of insects, 
uses these strong words: “ 'This process is formed in so remarkable a 
manner in butterflies, that we see therein the resurrection painted before 
our eyes, and exemplified so as to be examined by our hands.”? To see, 
indeed, a caterpillar crawling upon the earth sustained by the most ordi- 
nary kinds of food, which, when it has existed a few weeks or months 
under this humble form, its appointed work being finished, passes into an 
intermediate state of seeming death, when it is wound up in a kind of 
shroud and encased in a coffin, and is most commonly buried under the 
earth, (though sometimes its sepulchre is in the water, and at others in 
various substances in the air,) and after this creature and others of its 
tribe have remained their destined time in this death-like state, to behold 
earth, air, and water give up their several prisoners: to survey them, when, 
called by the warmth of the solar beam, they burst from their sepulchres, 
cast off their cerements, from this state of torpid inactivity, come forth, 
as a bride out of her chamber—to survey them, I say, arrayed in their 
nuptial glory, prepared to enjoy a new and more exalted condition of life, 
in which all their powers are developed, and they are arrived at the per- 
fection of their nature; when no longer confined to the earth they can 


1 Reaum. i. 359. 

* Dr. Herold ( Entwickelungs geschichte der Schmetterlinge), and other modern physiologists, 
deny that the germs of the skins of the caterpillar and chrysalis and of the future 
butterfly exist in the young caterpillar; but, for reasons assigned in detail in another 


place (vol. iii. edit. 5. pp. 52—62.), the theory of Swammerdam and Bonnet, as above ex- 
plained, is here preferred. 


3 Aill’s Swamm. i. 127. a. 
7 


* 


74 METAMORPHOSES. 


traverse the fields of air, their food is the nectar of flowers, and love 
begins his blissful reign ;—who that witnesses this fhteresting scene can 
help seeing in it a lively representation of man in his threefold state of 
existence, and more especially of that happy day, when, at the call of 
the great Sun of Righteousness, all that are in the grave shall come forth, 
the sea shall give up her dead, and death being swallowed up of life, the 
nations of the blessed shall live and love to the ages of eternity ? 

But although the analogy between the different states of insects and 
those of the body of man is only general, yet it is much more complete 
with respect to his soul. He first appears in his frail body—a child of the 
earth, a crawling worm, his soul being in a course of training and prepara- 
tion for a more perfect and glorious existence. Its course being finished, 
it casts off the earthly body, and goes into a hidden state of being in 
Hades, where it rests from its works, and is prepared for its final consum- 
mation. ‘The time for this being arrived, it comes forth clothed with a 
glorious body, not like its former, though germinating from it, for though 
“dt ts sown an animal body, it shall be raised a spiritual body,” endowed 
with augmented powers, faculties, and privileges commensurate to its new 
and happy state. And here the parallel holds perfectly between the 
insect and the man. The butterfly, the representative of the soul, is pre- 
pared in the larva for its future state of glory ; and if it be not destroyed 
by the ichneumons and other enemies to which it is exposed, symbolical 
of the vices that destroy the spiritual life of the soul, it will come to its 
state of repose in the pupa, which is its Hades; and at length, when it 
assumes the imago, break forth with new powers and beauty to its final 
glory and the reign of love. So that in this view of the subject well 
might the Italian poet exclaim : 


Non v’ accorgete voi, che noi siam’ vermi, 
Nati a formar I’ angelica farfalla? 


The Egyptian fable, as it is supposed to be, of Cupid and Psyche, 
seems built upon this foundation. ‘Psyche,’ says an ingenious and 
learned writer, ‘‘means in Greek the human soul; and it means also a 
butterfly ?, of which apparently strange double sense the undoubted reason 
is, that a butterfly was a very ancient symbol of the soul—from the prevy- 
alence of this symbol, and the consequent coincidence of the names, it 
happened that the Greek sculptors frequently represented Psyche as sub- 
ject to Cupid in the shape of a butterfly ; and that even when she appears 
in their works under the human form, we find her decorated with the light 
and filmy wings of that gay insect.” 

The following beautiful little poem falls in so exactly with the subject 
I have been discussing, that I cannot resist the temptation I feel to copy 
it for you, especially as I am not aware that it has appeared any where 
but in a newspaper :— 


' Do you not perceive that we are caterpillars, born to form the angelic butterfly ? 

2 It is worthy of remark, that in the north and west of England the moths that fly into 
candles are called saules (souls), perhaps from the old notion that the souls of the dead fly 
about at night in search of light. For the same reason, probably, the common people in 
Germany call them ghosts (geistchen). 

3 Nare’s Essays, i. 101, 102. 


METAMORPHOSES. 


THE BUTTERFLY’S BIRTH-DAY. 
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE BUTTERFLY’S BALL.”’ 


The shades of night were scarcely fled ; 
The air was mild, the winds were still ; 

And slow the slanting sun-beams spread 
O’er wood and lawn, o’er heath and hill : 


From fleecy clouds of pearly hue 
Had dropt a short but balmy shower, 
That hung like gems of morning dew 
On every tree and every flower : 


And from the blackbird’s mellow throat 
Was pour’d so loud and long a swell, 
As echoed with responsive note 
From mountain side and shadowy dell. 


When bursting forth to life and light, 
The offspring of enraptured May, 

The Burrerr.y, on pinions bright, 
Launch’d in full splendor on the day. 


Unconscious of a mother’s care, 

No infant wretchedness she knew ; 
But as she felt the vernal air, 

At once to full perfection grew. 


Her slender form, ethereal light, 

Her velvet-textured wings infold ; 
With all the rainbow’s colors bright, 

And dropt with spots of burnish’d gold. 


Trembling with joy awhile she stood, 
And felt the sun’s enlivening ray ; 

Drank from the skies the vital flood, 
And wonder’d at her plumage gay! 


And balanced oft her broider’d wings, 
Through fields of air prepared to sail : 

Then on her vent’rous journey springs, 
And floats along the rising gale. 


Go, child of pleasure, range the fields, 
Taste all the joys that spring can give, 

Partake what bounteous summer yields, 
And live whilst yet ‘tis thine to live. 


Go sip the rose’s fragrant dew, 
The lily’s honeyed cup explore, 
From flower to flower the search renew 
And rifle all the woodbine’s store : 


And let me trace thy vagrant flight, 
Thy moments too of short repose, 
And mark thee then with fresh delight 
Thy golden pinions ope and close. 


But hark! whilst thus I musing stand, 
Pours on the gale an airy note, 

And breathing from a viewless band, 
Soft silvery tones around me float! 


—They cease—but still a voice I hear, 
A whisper’d voice of hope and joy, 
“ Thy hour of rest approaches near, 
“ Prepare thee, mortal !—thou must die! 


“Yet start not !—on thy closing eyes 
‘* Another day shall still unfold, 

‘¢ A sun of milder radiance rise, 
“ A happier age of joys untold. 


76 _ METAMORPHOSES. 


“Shall the poor worm that shocks thy sight, 
“The humblest form in nature’s train, # 
“ Thus rise in new-born lustre bright, 
“ And yet the emblem teach in vain? 


“ Ah! where were once her golden eyes, 
“ Her glittering wings of purple pride? 
“Concealed beneath a rude disguise, 
“ A shapeless mass to earth allied. 


‘ Like thee the hapless reptile lived, 

“ Like thee he toil’d, like thee he spun, 
“Like thine his closing hour arrived, 

“ His labor ceased, his web was done. 


“ And shalt thou, number’d with the dead, 
“No happier state of being know? 

* And shall no future morrow shed 
“On thee a beam of brighter glow? 


“Ts this the bound of power divine, 
“To animate an insect frame ? 

“Or shall not He who moulded thine 
“ Wake at his will the vital flame? 


“Go, mortal! in thy reptile state, 
“Enough to know to thee is given; 
“Go, and the joyful truth relate ; 
y “Frail child of earth! high heir of heaven!’’ 

A question here naturally presents itsel—Why are insects subject to 
these changes? For what end is it that, instead of preserving, like other 
animals!, the same general form from infancy to old age, they appear at 
one period under a shape so different from that which they finally assume ; 
and why should they pass through an intermediate state of torpidity so 
extraordinary? I can only answer that such is the will of the Creator, 
who doubtless had the wisest ends in view, although we are incompetent 
satisfactorily to discover them. Yet one reason for this conformation may 
be hazarded. A very important part assigned to insects in the economy 
of nature, as I shall hereafter show, is that of speedily removing supera- 
bundant and decaying animal and vegetable matter. For such agents an 
insatiable voracity is an indispensible qualification, and not less so unusual 
powers of multiplication. But these faculties are in a great degree incom- 
patible. An insect occupied in the work of reproduction could not con- 
tinue its voracious feeding. Its life, therefore, after leaving the egg, is 
divided into three stages. In the first, as Jarva, it is in a state of sterility ; 
its sole object is the satisfying its insatiable hunger; and, for digesting the 
masses of food which it consumes, its intestines are almost all stomach. 
This is usually by much the longest period of its existence. Having now 
laid up a store of materials for the development of the future perfect 
insect, it becomes a pupa; and during this inactive period the important 
process slowly proceeds, uninterrupted by the calls of appetite. At length 
the perfect insect is disclosed. It now often requires no food at all; and 


1 A few vertebrate animals, viz. frogs, toads, and newts, undergo metamorphoses in some 
respects analogous to those of insects; their first form as tadpoles being very different from 
that which they afterwards assume. These reptiles, too, as well as snakes, cast their skin 
by an operation somewhat similar to that in larve. There is nothing, however, in their 
metamorphoses at all resembling the pupa state in insects. (See, however, Von Baer’s 
article on the Analogies of the Transformations of Insects and the Higher Animals in the 
Annales des Sciences Nat.) According to Mr. J. V. Thompson, both the common barnacles 
and many crustacea undergo metamorphoses, but to what extent these changes take place 
in the latter does not seem clearly ascertained. 


METAMORPHOSES, 77 


scarcely ever more than a very small quantity ; for the reception of which 
its stomach has been contracted, in some instances, to a tenth of its for- 
mer bulk. Its almost sole object is now the multiplication of its kind, from 
which it is diverted by no other propensity ; and this important duty being 
performed, the end of its existence has been answered, and it expires. 

It must be confessed that some objections might be thrown out against 
this hypothesis, yet I think none that would not admit of a plausible 
answer. ‘To these it is foreign to my purpose now to attend, and I shall 
conclude this letter by pointing out to you the variety of «new relations 
which this arrangement introduces into nature. One individual unites in 
itself, in fact, three species, whose modes of existence are often as different 
as those of the most distantly related animals of other tribes. The same 
insect often lives successively in three or four worlds. It is an inhabitant 
of the water during one period; of the earth during another; and of the 
air during a third; and fitted for its various abodes by new organs.and 
instruments, and a new form in each. Think (to use an illustration of 
Bonnet) but of the cocoon of the silkworm! How many hands, how 
many machines does not this little ball put into motion! Of what riches 
should we not have been deprived, if the moth of the silkworm had been 
born a moth, without having been previously a caterpillar! * The domestic 
economy of a large portion of mankind would have been formed on a plan 
altogether different from that which now prevails. 

, Iam, &c. 


71* 


78 


LETTER IV. 
INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
DIRECT INJURIES. 


In the letter which I devoted to the defence of Entomology, I gave you 
reason to expect, more effectually to obviate the objection drawn from the 
supposed insignificance of insects, that I should enter largely into the 
question of their importance to us both as instruments of good and evil. 
This I shall now attempt; and, as I wish to leave upon your mind a 
pleasant impression with respect to my favorites, I shall begin with the 
last of these subjects—the eyury which they do to us. 

The Almighty ordains various instruments for the punishment of offend- 
ing nations: sometimes he breaks them to pieces with the iron rod of war ; 
at others the elements are let loose against them; earthquakes and floods 
of fire, at his word, bring sudden destruction upon them ; seasons unfriend- 
ly to vegetation threaten them with famine; the blight and mildew realize 
these threats ; and often, the more to manifest and glorify his power, he 
employs means, at first sight, apparently the most insignificant and inade- 
quate to effect their ruin; the numerous tribes of insects are his armies’, 
marshalled by him, and by his irresistible command impelled to the work 
of destruction: where he directs them they lay waste the earth, and 
famine and the pestilence often follow in their train. 

The generality of mankind overlook or disregard these powerful, 
because minute, dispensers of punishment; seldom considering in how 
many ways their welfare is affected by them; but the fact is certain, that 
should it please God to give them a general commission against us, and 
should he excite them to attack, at the same time, our bodies, our clothing, 
our houses, our cattle, and the produce of our fields and gardens, we should 
soon be reduced, in every possible respect, to a state of extreme wretched- 
ness; the prey of the most filthy and disgusting diseases, divested of a 
covering, unsheltered, except by caves and dungeons, from the inclemency 
of the seasons, exposed to all the extremities of want and famine; and 
in the end, as Sir Joseph Banks, speaking on this subject, has well obsery- 
ed®, driven with all the larger animals from the face of the earth. You 
may smile, perhaps, and think this a high-colored picture, but you will 
recollect, 1am not stating the mischiefs that insects commonly do, but 
what they would do, according to all probability, if certain counter-checks 
restraining them within due limits had not been put in action; and 
which they actually do, as you will see, in particular cases, when those 
counter-checks are diminished or removed. 

Insects may be said, without hyperbole, to have established a kind of 
universal empire over the earth and its inhabitants. This is principally 


1 Joel, ii. 25. 2 On the Blight in Corn, p. 9. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 79 


conspicuous in the injuries which they occasion, for nothing in’ nature that 
possesses or has possessed animal or vegetable life is safe from their inroads, 
Neither the cunning of the fox, nor the swiftness of the horse or deer, nor 
the strength of the buffalo, nor the ferocity of the lion or tiger, nor the 
armor of the rhinoceros, nor the. giant bulk or sagacity of the elephant, 
nor even the authority of imperial man, who boasts himself to be the lord 
of all, can secure them from becoming a prey to these despised beings. 
The air affords no. protection to the birds, nor the water to the fish ; insects 
pursue them all to their most secret conclaves and strongest citadels, and 
compel them to submit to theirsway. Flora’s empire is still more exposed 
to their cruel domination and ravages; and there is scarcely one of her 
innumerable subjects, from the oak, the glory of the forest, to the most 
minute lichen that grows upon its trunk, that is not destined to be the 
food of these next to nonentities in our estimation. And when life departs 
from man, the inferior animals, or vegetables, they become universally, 
sooner or later, the inheritance of insects. 

I shall principally bespeak your attention to the injuries in question as 
they affect ourselves. .These may be divided into direct and indirect. 
By direct injuries I mean every species of attack upon our own persons ; and 
by indirect, such as are made upon our property. ‘To the former of these 
I shall confine myself in the present letter. 


Insects, as to their direct attacks upon us, may be arranged in three 
principal classes. ‘Those, namely, which seek to make us their food ; 
those whose object is to prevent or revenge an injury which they either 
fear, or have received from us; and those which indeed offer us no 
violence, but yet incommode us extremely in other ways. 

I hope I shall not too much offend your delicacy if I begin the first 
class of our insect assailants with a very disgusting genus, which Provi- 
dence seems to have created to punish inattention to personal cleanliness, 
But though this pest of man must not be wholly passed over, yet, since 
it is unfortunately too well known, it will not be at all necessary for me 
to enlarge upon its history. I shall only mention one fact which shows 
the astonishingly rapid increase of these animals, where they have once 
gotten possession. It is a vulgar notion, that a louse in twenty-four hours 
may see two generations ; but this is rather overshooting the mark. Leeu- 
wenhoek, whose love for science overcame the nausea that such creatures 
are apt to excite, proves that their nits or eggs are not hatched till the 
eight day after they are laid, and that they do not themselves commence 
laying before they are a month old. He ascertained, however, that a 
single female louse may, in eight weeks, witness the birth of five thousand 
descendants.". You remember how wolves were extirpated from this 
country, but perhaps never suspected any monarch of imposing a tribute 
of lice upon his subjects. Yet we are gravely told that in Mexico and 
Peru such a poll-tax was exacted, and that bags full of these treasures 
were found in the palace of Montezuma!!!2 Were our own taxes paid 
m such coin, what little grumbling would there be ! 

Two other species of this genus, besides the common louse, are, in this 


Leeuw. Epist. 98. 1696. 
* Bingley, Anim. Biogr. first edition, iii. 437. St. Pierre’s Studies, &c. i. 312. 


80 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


country, parasites upon the human body.—But already I seem to hear 
you exclaim, “ Why dwell so long on creatures so oflious and nauseating, 
whose injuries are confined to the profanum vulgus ? Leave them there- 
fore to the canaille—they are nothing to us.” Not so fast, my friend— 
recollect what historians and other writers have recorded concerning the 
Phthiriasis, or pedicular disease ; and you must own that, for the quelling 
of human pride, and to pull down the high conceits of mortal man, this 
most loathsome of all maladies, or one equally disgusting, has been the 
inheritance of the rich, the wise, the noble, and the mighty; and in the 
list of those that have fallen victims to it, you will find poets, philosophers, 
prelates, princes, kings, and emperors. It seems more particularly to 
have been a judgment of God upon oppression and tyranny, whether civil 
or religious. ‘Thus the inhuman Pheretima mentioned by Herodotus, 
Antiochus Epiphanes, the Dictator Sylla, the two Herods, the emperor 
Maximin, and, not to mention more, the great persecutor of the Protest- 
ants, Philip the second, were carried off by it. 

I say by this malady, or one equally disgusting, because it is not by 
any means certain, though some learned men have so supposed, that all 
these instances, aed others of a similar nature, standing also upon record, 
are to be referred to the same specific cause; since there is very sufficient 
reason for thinking that at least three different descriptions of insects are 
concerned in the various cases that have been handed down to us under 
the common name of Phthiriasis. As the subject of maladies connected 
with insects, or produced by them, is both curious and interesting, although 
no writer, that I am aware of, has given a full consideration, and at the 
same time falls in with my general design, I hope you will not regard me 
as guilty of presumption, and of intruding into the province of medical 
men, if I enter rather largely into it, and state to you the reasons that 
have induced me to embrace the above hypothesis, leaving you full liberty 
to reject it if you do not find it consonant to reason and fact. The three 
kinds of insects to which I allude, as concerned in cases that have been 
deemed Phthiriasis, are lice (Pediculi, L.) mites (Acari, L.), and Larve 
in general.’ 

As far as the habits of the genus Pediculus, whether inhabiting man or 
the inferior animals, are at present known, it does not appear, from any 
well ascertained fact, that the species belonging to it are ever subcutane- 
ous. For this observation, as far as it relates to man, I can produce the 
highest medical authority. ‘ The louse feeds on the surface of the skin,” 
says the learned Dr. Mead in his Medica Sacra; and Dr. Willan, in his 
palmary work on Cutaneous Diseases, remarks with respect to the body- 
louse, ‘ that the nits, or eggs, are deposited on the small hairs of the skin,” 
and that “the animals are found on the skin, or on the linen, and not 
under the cuticle, as some authors have represented.” And he further 
observes, that ‘many marvelous stories are related by Forestus, Schen- 
kius, and others, respecting lice bred under the skin, and discharged in 
swarms from abscesses, strumous ulcers, and vesications. ‘The mode in 
which Pediculi are generated being now so well ascertained, no credit 
can be given to these accounts.” ‘Thus far this great man, who however 


1 The terms Acariasis and Scolechiasis have been applied to the diseases produced by 
Acari and Larve. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 81 


supposes (in which opinion Dr. Bateman concurs with him) that the 
authors to whom he alludes had mistaken for lice some other species of 
insects, which are not unfrequently found in putrefactive sores. 

If these observations be allowed their due weight, it will follow, that a 
disease produced by animals residing under the cuticle cannot be a true 
Phthiriasis, and therefore the death of the poet Aleman, and of Phere- 
eydes Syrius the philosopher, mentioned by Aristotle, must have been 
occasioned by some other kind of insect. For, speaking of the lice to 
which he attributes these catastrophes, he says that “they are produced 
in the flesh in small pustule-like tumors, which have no pus, and from which | 
when punctured they issue.”? For the same reason, the disorder which 
Dr. Heberden has described in his Commentaries, from the communica- 
tions of Sir E. Wilmot, under the name of Morbus pedicularis, must also 
be a different disease, since, with Aristotle, he likewise represents the 
insects as inhabiting tumors, from which they may be extracted when 
opened by a needle. He says, indeed, that in every respect they resem- 
ble the common lice, except in being whiter; but medical men, who 
were not at the same time entomologists, might easily mistake an Acarus 
for a Pediculus.? 

Dr. Willan, in one case of Prurigo senilis, observed a number of small 
insects on the patient’s skin and linen. They were quick in their motion, 
and so minute that it required some attention to discover them. He took 
them at first for small Pediculi ; but under a lens they appeared to him 
rather to be a nondescript species of Pulex®; yet the figure he gives has 
not the slightest likeness to the latter genus, while it bears a striking resem- 
blance to the former. It is not clear whether his draughtsman meant to 
represent the insect with six or with eight legs: if it had only six, it was 
probably a Pediculus; but if it had eight, it would form a new genus 
between the Acarinaand the hexapod Aptera. Dr. Bateman, in reply to 
some queries put to him, at my request, by our common and lamented 
friend Dr. Reeve, relates that he understood from Dr. Willan, in conversa- 
tion, that the insect in question jumped in its motion. This circumstance 
he regards as conclusive against its being a Pediculus ; but such a conse- 
quence does not necessarily follow, since it not seldom happens that insects 
of the same tribe or genus either have or have not this faculty ; for in- 
stance, compare Scirtes with Cyphon, small beetles, and Acarus Scabier 
with other Acari.* 

Dr. Willan has quoted with approbation two cases from Amatus Lusi- 
tanus, which he seems to think correctly described as Phthiriasis. In one 
of them, however, which terminated fatally, the circumstances seem rather 
hyperbolically stated—I mean, where it is said that two black servants 
had no other employment than carrying baskets full of these insects to 

1 Hist. Animal.1. 5. ¢. 31. 

2 From the terms employed by Aristotle and Dr. Mead in their account of these cases, it 
appears that the animal they meant could not be maggots, but something bearing a more 
general resemblance to lice. 

3 On Cutaneous Diseases, 87, 88. ; and t. 7. f. 4. 

4 Latreille at first considered this as belonging to a distinct genus from the common mite 
(Acarus domesticus), which he named Sarcoptes; but upon its being discovered that it also 


has mandibles, he suppressed it (N. Dict. d’Hist. Nat. xxi. 221.); but it has been since 
resumed by M. Dugés and other authors. 


82 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


I call upon you to believe this ; I shall therefore leave you to act as you 
please.—Thus much for pure Phthiriasis, which term ought to be con- 
fined to maladies produced by lice. I shall only further observe, that as 
many species as exist of these, which are the causes of disease, so many 
kinds of Phthiriasis will there be.’ 

Acari, or mites, are the next insect sources of disease in the human 
species, and that not of one, but probably of many kinds, both local and 
general. ‘They are distinguished from Pediculi not only by their form, 
but also often by their situation, since they frequently establish themselves 
under the cuticle. With respect to local disorders, Dr. Adams conjectures 
that Acari may be the cause of certain cases of Ophthalmia. Sir J. 
Banks, in a letter to that gentleman, relates that some seamen belonging 
to the Endeavour brig, being tormented with a severe itching round the 
extremities of the eyelids, one of them was cured by an Otaheitan woman, 
who with two small splinters of bamboo extracted from between the cilia 
abundance of very minute lice, which were scarcely visible without a lens, 
though their motion when laid on the thumb, was distinctly perceived. 
These insects were probably synonymous with the Ciron des paupiéres of 
Sauvages.*—Le Jeune, a French physician quoted in Mouffet, describes a 
case, in which what seems a different species, since he calls them rather 
large, infested the white of the eye, exciting an intolerable itching.* Dr. 
Mead, from the German Ephemerides, gives an account of a woman 
suckling her child, from whose breast proceeded very minute vermicles.* 
These were probably mites, and perhaps that species, which, from its 
feeding upon milk, Linné denominates Acarus Lactis. The great author 
last mentioned describes an insect, a native of America, under the name 
of Pediculus Ricinoides, which, upon the authority of Rolander, he informs 
us, gets into the feet of people as they walk, sucks their blood, oviposits® 
in them, and so occasions very dangerous ulcers. It would be an Acarus, 
he observes, but it has only six legs. Now Hermann affirms, that some 
species of Trombidium (a genus separated by Fabricius from Acarus) 
have in no state more than six legs.6 Others of the tribe of Acarina, 
and the insect in question amongst the rest, may be similarly cireum- 
stanced ; or those that Rolander examined might have been larve, which 
in this tribe are usually hexapods. 

Linné appears to have been of opinion that many contageous diseases 
are caused by mites.’ How far he was justified in this opinion I shall 
not here inquire; facts alone can decide the question, and observations 
made by men acquainted with Entomology as well as the science of dis- 
eases. Considerable deference and attention, however, are certainly due 

1 For further information on this disease, see the valuable Manual of Entomology, by Dr. 
Burmeister, for an English translation of which we are indebted to Mr. Shuckard (p. 307.), 
where, it is contended, but surely on inconclusive evidence, that Pediculus tabescentium, Alt. 
( Dissertatio de Phthiriasis, Bonne, 1820) is produced by spontaneous generation. 

2 On Morbid Poisons, 306, 307. 3 Mouffet, 267. 

4 Medica Sacra, 104, 105. 

5 It is to be hoped this new word may be admitted, as the laying of eggs cannot otherwise 
he expressed without a periphrasis. For the same reason its substantive Oviposition will be 
employed. 

6 Mém. Apterologique, 19. 

7 Insecta ejusmodi minutissima, forte, Acaros diverse speciei causas esse diversorum 


morborum contagiosorum, ab analogia et experientia hactenus acquisita, facili credimus 
negotio. Amen, Ac. v. 94. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 83 


to the sentiments of so great a naturalist, in whom these necessary qualifi- 
cations were united in no common degree. With respect to the dysen- 
tery and the itch, he affirms that this had been manifested to his eyes. 
You will wish probably to know the arguments that may be adduced in 
confirmation of this opinion; I will therefore endeavor to satisfy you as 
well as lam able. The following history given by Linné seems to prove 
the dysentery connected with these animals. 

Rolander, a student in Entomology, while he resided in the house of 
the illustrious Swede, was attacked by the disease in question, which 
quickly gave way to the usual remedies. Eight days after it returned 
again, and was as before soon removed. A third time, at the end of the 
same period, he was seized with it. All the while he had been living 
like the rest of the family, who had nevertheless escaped. This, of course, 
occasioned no little inquiry into the cause of what had happened. Linné, 
aware that Bartholinus had attributed the dysentery to insects, which he 
professed to have seen, recommended it to his pupil to examine his feces. 
Rolander, following this advice, discovered in them innumerable animal- 
cules, which upon a close examination proved to be mites. IJtwas next a 
question how he alone came to be singled out by them; and thus he ac- 
counts for it. It was his habit not todrink at his meals; but in the night, 
growing thirsty, he often sipped some liquid out of a vessel made of juni- 
per wood. Inspecting this very narrowly, he observed, in the chinks 
between the ribs, a white line, which, when viewed under a lens, he found 
to consist of innumerable mites, precisely the same with those that he had 
voided. Various experiments were tried with them, and a preparation of 
rhubarb was found to destroy them most effectually. He afterwards dis- 
covered them in vessels containing acids, and often under the bung of 
casks.! In the instance here recorded, the dysentery, or diarrhoea, was 
evidently produced by a species of mite, which Linné hence called Aca- 
rus Dysenteria ; but it would be going too far, I apprehend, to assert that 
they are invariably the cause of that disease. 

That Scabies, or the itch, is occasioned by a mite, is not a doctrine 
peculiar to the moderns. Mouffet mentions Abinzoar, called also Aven- 
zoar, a celebrated Hispano-Arabian physician of Seville, who flourished 
in the twelfth century, as the most ancient author that notices it. He 
calls. these mites little lice that creep under the skin of the hands, legs, 
and feet, exciting pustules full of fluid. Joubert, quoted by the same 
author, describes them under the name of Sirones, as always being con- 
cealed beneath the epidermis, under which they creep like moles, gnawing 
it, and causing a most troublesome itching. It appears that Mouffet, or 
whoever was the author of that part of the Theatrum Insectorum, was 
himself also well acquainted with these animals, since he remarks that 
their habitation is not in the pustule but near it: a remark afterwards 
confirmed by Linné*, and more recently by Dr. Adams.4 In common 
with the former of these authors, Mouffet further notices the effect of 


' 1 Amen. Ac. v. 94—98. 2 Mouffet, 266. 

3 Acarus sub ipsa pustula minimé querendus est, sed longius recessit, sequendo rugam 
cuticulz observatur. Aman, Ac. v. 95. not. **. 

4 Observations, &c. 296. 


84 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


warmth upon them in exciting motion.’ Our intelligent countryman also 
observes that they cannot be Pediculi, since they tire under the cuticle, 
which lice never do.” In the epistle dedicatory, the editor speaks also of 
them as living in burrows which they» have excavated in the skin near a 
lake of water; from which, if they be extracted with a needle and put 
upon the nail, they shew in the sun their red head and the feet with which 
they walk.3 And to close my veteran authorities, Junius thus explains 
the word Acarus, as I find him quoted in Gouldman’s useful dictionary, 
** A small worm, which eats under the skin, and makes burrows in itching 
hands.’”4 

In more modern times, microscopical figures have been added to descrip- 
tions of the insect. Bonomo first furnished this valuable species of elu- 
cidation. His figures, however, which are copied by Baker in his work 
on the microscope, are far from accurate.? Those of De Geer and Dr. 
Adams are much more satisfactory, and mutually confirm each other.® 
From them it is evident that the same insect inhabits the scabies of Sweden 
and Madeira. Dr. Bateman, in the letter before alluded to, informs his 
correspondent, that he had seen that from Madeira, and gives it as his 
opinion, that there cannot be a doubt of the existence of an Acarus 
Scabiei; an opinion which he repeats in his late work on Cutaneous 
Diseases, and which, according to Hermann’, has been also rendered 
unquestionable by Wichmann in his Etiologie de la Gale (Hanovre, 1786), 
a work I have not had an opportunity of consulting. From all this we 
may regard the point as so far settled, that an animal of this kind exists 
at least as an occasional concomitant of scabies. 

This fact being ascertained, a more complex inquiry remains, which 
branches out into two distinct questions. Is scabies always produced by 
these insects? Or, if this be not the case, is the animate scabies a distinct 
disease from the inanimate ? 

It is very remarkable that Linné, a physician as well as a naturalist, 
and De Geer, one of the most accurate observers that ever existed, should 
both assign the insect in question as the undoubted cause of the eommon 
scabies of their country ; the one applying to the disease he was speaking 
of the epithet of communissima, and observing the fact to be notorious’ 
(cuique liquet), and the other designating it by its well known French 
name, La Gale.’ Andis it not equally remarkable that such men as John 
Hunter, Dr. Heberden, Dr. Bateman, Dr. Adams, and Mr. Baker, should 


1 Extractus acu et super ungue positus, movet se si solis etiam calore adjuvetur. ubi supr. 
Ungui impositus vix movetur: si vero oris calido halitu affletur, agilis in ungue cursitat. 
Fn, Suec. 1975. ‘ 

2 Neque Syrones isti sunt de pediculorum genere, ut Johannes Langius ex Aristotele 
videtur asserere: nam illi extra cutem vivunt, hi vero non. ubi supr. 

3 Imo ipsi Acari pre exiguitate indivisibiles, ex cuniculis prope aque lacum quos fode- 
runt in cuie, acu extracti et ungue impositi, caput rubrum, et pedes quibus gradiuntur ad 
solem produnt. p. vi. 

4 Teredo sive exiguus vermiculus, qui subter cutem erodit agitque cuniculos in prurigi- 
nosis manibus. Gouldman tells us these Acari were also called Hand-worms. Another 
English name ts given in Mouffet, viz. Wheale-worms. 

5 Osservazioni intorno a pellicelli del corpo umano fatte dal Dottor Gio Cosimo Bonomo, &c. 
f. {—3. Baker, On Microsc, i. t. 13. f. 2. 

6 De Geer, vil. t. 5. f. 12. 14. 7 Mém. Apterologique, 79. 

® Tam informed by my learned friend Alexander MacLeay, Esq. late secretary to the 
Linnean Society, that, in the north of Scotland, the insect of the itch is well known, and 
easily discovered and extracted. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 85 


never, in this country, have been able to meet with it? Did it indeed 
exist in our common scabies, it seems impossible that it could have escaped 
the observation of the two last of these gentlemen; Dr. Adams being so 
well qualified to detect it from his observations in Madeira, and Mr. Baker 
from’ his expertness in microscopical researches. Dr. Bateman, in the 
letter above quoted, says, “‘I have hunted it with a good magnifier in 
many cases of itch, both in and near the pustules, and in the red streaks 
or furrows, but always without success. In his work on Cutaneous Dis- 
eases, he tells us, however, that he has seen it, in one instance, when it 
had been taken from the diseased surface by another practitioner. And 
though Dr. Willan in his book speaks of the Acarus as the concomitant 
of this disease, yet his learned friend just mentioned observes, that he ad- 
mitted that it was not to be found in ordinary cases, and indeed never 
seemed to have made up his mind upon the subject. When I was at 
Norwich, in 1812, Dr. Reeve very kindly accompanied me to the House 
of Industry there, to examine a patient whose body was very full of the 
pustules of this disorder; but though we used a good magnifier, we could 
discover nothing like an insect. I must observe, however, that our examin- 
ation was made in December, in severe weather, when the cold might, 
perhaps, render the animal torpid, and less easy to be discovered. 

From the above facts it seems fair to infer that this animal is not inva- 
riably the cause of scabies, but that there are cases with which it has no 
connection. Now, from this inference, would not another also follow, 
that the disease produced by the insect is specifically distinct from that in 
which it cannot be found? Sauvages and Dr. Adams are both of this 
opinion!, the former assigning to it the trivial name of vermicularis, and 
the latter proving, by very satisfactory arguments, that it is different from 
the other. If they were both animate diseases, but derived from two 
distinct species of animals (for it seems not impossible that even our com- 
mon itch may be caused by a mite more minute than the other,,and so 
more difficult to find), they would properly be considered as distinct 
species ; much more, therefore, if one be animate and the other inanimate. 
Nay this, I should think, would lead to a doubt whether even their genus 
were the same. [I shall dismiss this part of my subject with the mention 
of a discovery of Dr. Adams, which seems to have escaped both Linné 
and De Geer, that the Acarus Scabiei is endowed with the faculty of 
leaping (in this respect resembling the insect found by Willan in Prurigo 
senilis mentioned above), for which purpose its four posterior thighs are 
incrassated.” 

But besides these Acarine diseases, there seems to be one (unless with 
Linné we regard the plague as of this class*) more fearful and fatal than 
them all. You will, perhaps, conjecture I am speaking of that described 
by Aristotle and Sir E. Wilmot as the Phthiriasis, and your conjecture 


! This opinion Dr. Bateman thinks probably the true one. Catan. Dis. 197. 

? Itmay be mentioned here as a remarkable fact, that the Acarus Scabiei was discovered 
by M. Latrielle upon a New Holland quadruped (Phascolomys fusca Geoffr.) of the Marsu- 
pian tribe. NV. Dict. d’ Hist. Nat. xxi. 222. Much light has recently been thrown on the 
hisory of Acarus Scabiei by M. A. Dugés, who regards it as forming the distinct genus 
Sarcoptes (Ann. de Sci. Nat. 2d Serie, iii. 255.), and by MM. Bande, Rennucci, Sédillot, 
and Blainville, the last of whom has given a critical history of this parasite in his report 
in the Nouv. Ann. du Mus. iv. 213. See also Raspail’s Mémoire Comparatif sur I’ Hist. Nat. 
de I’ Insecte de la Gale. 3 Amen Ac. ubi supr. 101. 


8 


86 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


will be right. But some think, and those men of merited celebrity, that 
mites have nothing to do in these and similar cases, br that maggots were 
the parasites mistaken for lice. ‘This, from the passage above quoted, 
appears to have been Dr. Willan’s opinion, to which, in the letter so often 
referred to, Dr. Bateman subscribes, adding as a reason for excluding 
mites from being concerned, that, “they are too minute, and never have 
been seen in such numbers as to be mistaken for lice.” But both vary in 
size, some of the former being larger than some of the latter. And allow- 
ing them to be ever so minute, yet when they issue in swarms, as mites 
from a cheese, they would be very visible, were it only from their motion. 
Besides, as they are furnished with legs, their motions resemble those of 
lice infinitely more than do the contortions of maggots. So that a mite 
would be deemed a louse much sooner by an unentomological observer than 
would a maggot. Whether mites have ever been seen in such numbers as 
to be mistaken for lice, is the point in question, and therefore, by itself, 
cannot be admitted for a valid argument. Though Acarus Scabiei does 
not appear to swarm in ordinary cases, yet this is certainly no reason why 
other species may not do so. Where it has once made a settlement, how 
incredibly, and in how short a space of time, does the Stro or cheese-mite 
multiply! -Acarus destructor and many other species are equally rapid 
in their increase.—Millions of lice are said by Lafontaine, whom Hermann 
calls a very exact describer, to show themselves in Plica polonica, on the 
third day of the disease’; but whether the last-mentioned author be cor- 
rect in thinking it more probable that they are mites*, I have not the means 
of judging. 

I shall now produce two instances where mites were evidently concern- 
ed. Dr. Mead, from the German Ephemerides, relates the miserable case 
of a French nobleman, from whose eyes, nostrils, mouth, and urinary 
passage, animalcules of a red color, and excessively minute, broke forth 
day and night, attended by the most horrible and excruciating pains, and 
at length occasioned his death. ‘The account further says, that they were 
produced from his corrupted blood. ‘This was probably a fancy originat- 
ing in their red color ; but the whole history, whether we consider the size 
and color of the animals, or the places from which they issue, is inappli- 
cable to larve or maggots, and agrees very well with mites, some of which, 
particularly Leptus autumnalis, are of a bright red color. ‘The other case, 
and a very similar one, is that recorded by Mouffet of Lady Penruddock, 
concerning whom he expressly tells us, that Acari swarmed in every part 
of her body—her head, eyes, nose, lips, gums, the soles of her feet, &c., 
tormenting her day and night, till, in spite of every remedy, all the flesh 
of her body being consumed, she was at length relieved by death from 
this terrible state of suffering. Mouffet attributes her disease to the Aca- 
rus Scabiez, but from the symptoms and fatal result, it seems to have been 
a different and much more terrific animal. He supposes, in this instance, 
the insect to have been generated by drinking goat’s milk too copiously. 
This, if correct, would lead to a conjecture that it might have been the 


A. Lactis, L.° 


1 Traités de Chirurgie, &c. Leipsig, 1792. 2 Mém. Apterolog. 78. 
3 A new species of mite has just been described by M. Simon, which lives in the diseased 
and normal hair-sacs of man. Maller’s Archiv. 1842, p. 278. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 87 


These cases I hope will satisfy you that mites, as well as lice, are the 
cause of diseases in the human frame. ‘This, indeed, as has been before 
observed, is allowed on all hands with respect to that of the itch; and it is, 
certainly, not more improbable that man should be exposed to the attack 
of several species of this genus, than that three or four kinds of Pediculus 
should infest him. If you are convinced by what I have written, you 
will concur with me in thinking that the one are as much entitled to give 
their name to the disease which they produce as the other; and the term 
Acariasis, by which, with due reference to medical men, I propose to 
distinguish generically all acarine diseases, will not be refused its place 
amongst your Genera Morborum. 

I shall now proceed to the remaining class of diseases mistaken for 
Phthiriasis ; those, namely, which are produced by larve. ‘There are 
two terms employed by ancient authors, Eule (Evia) and WScolex 
(2x@iyt), which seem properly to denote larve; but there is often such 
a want of precision in the language of writers unacquainted with Natural 
History, that it is very difficult to make out what objects they mean ; and 
expressions which, strictly taken, should be understood of larve, may 
probably have sometimes been used to denote the cause of either the pedi- 
cular or acarine disease. ule, which term, though given by Hesychius 
as synonymous with Scolex, is by Plutarch used as of different import’, 
seems properly to mean those larve which are generated in dead carcases, 
at least so Homer has more than once applied it®: it is therefore a word 
of a much more restricted sense than Scolex, which probably belongs to 
the larve of every order of insects: for so Aristotle employs it, when he 
says that all insects produce a Scolex,or are larviparous.2 Yet when 
Homer compares Harpalion stretched dead upon the ground to a Scolex*, 
it should seem as if he used the word for an earth-worm, which Aristotle 
commonly calls by a figurative periphrasis, “‘ Entrails of the earth.”® In 
the Holy Scriptures this word is used to signify larve which prey upon 
and are the torment of living bodies. It may on this account, perhaps, be 
regarded as generally meaning such larve, to whatever order or genus 
they belong. 

Dr. Mead, therefore, is most probably right when he considers the dis- 
ease stated by the ancients to be caused by Eule or Scoleches, commonly 
translated worms, as distinct from Phthiriasis; and if so, the inhuman 
Pheretima, who swarmed with Eule, and Herod Agrippa, who was eaten 
of Scoleches*, were probably neither of them destroyed either by Pediculi 
or Acari, but by larve or maggots. And when Galen prescribed a remedy 
for ulcers inhabited by Scoleches, observing that animals similar to those 
generated by putrid substances are often found in abscesses, he probably 
meant the same thing. The proper appellation of this genus of diseases 
would be Scolechiasis.® 

This dissertation may perhaps appear to you rather prolix and tedious ; 


1 In Artazxerz. 2 Il. y. 1. 599. w. 1, 414. 

3 Ta de evropa tavra cxwdAnxoroxet. De Generat. Animal. 1. 2. c¢. 1. 

4 Il. v. 1. 654, 655. 

5 Ins evrepa. De Animal. Incessu,c.9. De Generat. Animal. 1.3. ¢. 11. 

6 Mark, ix. 44. 46. 48. 7 Leornkobpwros. Acts, xii. 23. 

® See Memoir by the Rev. F. W. Hope, containing a great number of cases of Scolechi- 
asis, in the 2d volume of the Trans. of the Ent. Soc. of London. 


88 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


yet to settle the meaning of terms is of the first impgrtance. To inquire 
what ancient writers intended by the words which they employ, and 
whether such as have been usually regarded as synonymous are really so, 
may often furnish us with a clue to some useful or interesting truth; and 
not seldom enable us to rescue their reputation from much of the censure 
which has been inconsiderately cast upon it. Because they did not know 
every thing, or so much as we do, we are too apt to think that they knew 
nothing. ‘That they fell into very considerable errors, especially in sub- 
jects connected with Natural History, cannot be denied; but then it 
ought to be considered that they possessed scarcely any of those advanta- 
ges by which we are enabled to penetrate into nature’s secrets. The 
want of the microscope alone was an effectual bar to their progress in 
this branch ofscience. Yet,insome instances, when they took a general view 
of a subject, they appear to have had very correct ideas. This observa- 
tion particularly applies to the philosopher of Stagyra, whose mighty mind 
and lyncean eye, in spite of those mists of prejudice and fable that envel- 
oped the age in which he lived, enabled him in part to pierce through the 
gloom, and comprehend and behold the fair outline that gives symmetry, 
grace, and beauty to the whole of nature’s form, though he mistook, or 
was not able to trace out, her Jess prominent features and minor linea- 
ments. : 


It is now time to return from this Jong digression, which, however, is 
closely connected with the subject of this letter, to the point from which 
I deviated. ‘Taking my leave of the disgusting animals which gave rise 
to it, I proceed to call your attention to another of our pigmy tormentors 
(Pulex irritans), which, in the opinion of some, seems to have been 
regarded as an agreeable rather than a repulsive object. ‘Dear miss,” 
said a lively old lady to a friend of mine (who had the misfortune to be 
confined to her bed by a broken limb, and was complaining that the fleas 
tormented her), “don’t you like jleas? Well, I think they are the pret- 
tiest little merry things in the world.—I never saw a dull flea in all my 
life.” The celebrated Willughby kept a favorite flea, which used at 
stated times to be admitted to suck the palm of his hand; and enjoyed 
this privilege for three months, when the cold killed it. And Dr. Town- 
son, from the encomium which he bestows upon these vigilant little vault- 
ers, as supplying the place of an alarum and driving us from the bed of 
sloth, should seem to have regarded them with feelings much more com- 
placent than those of Dr. Clarke and his friends, when their hopes of 
passing “one night free from the attacks of vermin” were changed into 
despair by the information of the laughing Sheik, that “the king of the 
fleas held his court at Tiberias:” or than those of MM. Lewis and Clarke, 
who found them more tormenting than all the other plagues of the Mis- 
souri country, where they sometimes compel even the natives to shift their 
quarters. If you unhappily view them in this unfavorable light, and have 
found ordinary methods unavailing for ridding yourself of these unbidden 
guests, I can furnish you with a probatum est recipe, which the first-men- 
tioned traveler tells us the Hungarian shepherds (who seem to have been 
stupidly insensible to their value as alarums) find completely effectual to 
put to flight these inseets and their neighbors the lice. ‘This is not, as 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 89 


you may be tempted to think, by a remarkable attention to cleanliness.— 
Quite the reverse.—They grease their linen with hog’s lard, and thus 
render themselves disgusting even to fleas! If this does not satisfy, I 
have another recipe in store for you. You may shoot at them with a 
cannon, as report says did Christina queen of Sweden, whose piece of 
artillery, of Lilliputian caliber; which was employed in this warfare,is 
still exhibited in the arsenal of Stockholm.! But, seriously, if you wish 
for an effectual remedy, that prescribed by old Tusser, in the following 
lines, will answer your purpose :— 
«“ While wormwood hath seed, get a handfull or twaine, 

To save against March, to make flea to refraine: 

Where chamber is sweeped, and wormwood is strown, 

No flea for his life dare abide to be known.” 

To this family belongs an insect, abundant in the West Indies and South 
America, the attacks of which are infinitely more serious than those of the 
common flea. You will readily conjecture that I am speaking of the cele- 
brated Chigoe or Jiggers, called also Nigua, Tungua, and Pique? (Pulex 
Sarcopsylla penetrans) one of the direst personal pests with which the 
sins of man have been visited. All disputes concerning the genus of this 
insect a have been settled long before Swartz’s time (who first gave 
a satisfactory description and. figure of it, proving it to be a Pulea, as has 
been observed above), had success attended the patriotic attempt of the 
Capuchin friar recorded by Walton in his History of St. Domingo, who 
brought away with him from that island a colony of these animals, which 
he permitted to establish themselves in one of his feet; but unfortunately 
for himself, and for science, the foot intrusted with the precious deposit 
mortified, was obliged to be amputated, and with all its inhabitants com- 
mitted to the waves. According to Ulloa, and his opinion is confirmed 
by Jussieu, there are two South American species of this mischievous 
insect. It is described as generally attacking the feet and legs’, getting, 
without being felt, between the skin and the flesh, usually under the nails 
of the toes, where it nidificates and lays its eggs, which previously swell 
out the abdomen to a great size; and if timely attention be not paid to it, 
which, as it occasions no other uneasiness than itching (the sensation at 
first, 1 am assured, is rather pleasing than otherwise), is sometimes neg- 
lected, it multiplies to such a degree, as to be attended by the most fatal 
consequences, often, as in the above instance, rendering amputation neces- 
sary, and sometimes causing death.4 The female slaves in the West 
Indies are frequently employed to extract these pests, which they do with 
uncommon dexterity. Yarico, so celebrated in prose and verse, performed 
this kind office for honest Ligon, who says, in his History of Barbadoes, 
“T have had ten (Chegoes) taken out of my feet in a morning, by the 
most unfortunate Yarico, an Indian woman.”° Humboldt observes, “ that 


1 Linn. Lach. Lapp. ii. 32. note *. 

2 Latreille after De Geer (vii. 153.) supposes the Pigue and Nigua of Ulloa to be synony- 
mous with Ixodes americanus, L. Hist. Nat. vii. 364.; but it is evident from Ulloa’s descrip- 
tions (Voy. i. 63. Engl. Trans.) that they are synonymous with the Chigoe, or Pulex 
penetrans. 

3 Captain Hancock, late commander of His Majesty’s ship the Foudroyant, to whose 
friendly exertions I am indebted for one of the finest collections of Brazil insects ever brought 
to England, informs me that they will attack any exposed part of the body, He had them 
once in his hand. 4 Piso and Margr. Ind. 289. 5 Pp. 65. 


g* 


* 
90 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


the whites born im the torrid zone walk barefoot with igpunity in the same 
apartment were a European recently landed is exposed to the attack of 
this animal. The Nigua therefore distinguishes what the most delicate 
chemical analysis could not distinguish, the cellular membrane and blood 
of a European from those of a creole white.”* 

You have already, perhaps, been satiated with the account before 
given of our enemies of the Acarus tribe: there are a few, however, 
which I could not with propriety introduce there, as they do not take up 
their abode and breed in us, which nevertheless annoy us considerably. 
One of these is a hexapod so minute, that, were it not for the uncommon 
brilliancy of its color, which is the most vivid crimson that can be con- 
ceived, it would be quite invisible. It is known by the name of the harvest- 
bug (Leptus autumnalis), and is so called, I imagine, from its attacking 
the legs of the laborers employed in the harvest, in the flesh of which it 
buries itself at the root of the hairs, producing intolerable itching, attend- 
ed by inflammation and considerable tumors, and sometimes even occa- 
sioning fevers.2—A similar insect is found in Brazil, abounding in the 
rainy season, particularly during the gleams of sunshine, or fine days that 
intervene ; as small as a point, and moving very fast. ‘These animals get 
upon the linen and cover it in a moment ; afterwards they insinuate them- 
selves into the skin and occasion a most intolerable itching. ‘They are 
with difficulty extracted, and leave behind them large livid tumors, which 
subside in a day or two. An insect very tormenting to the wood-cutters 
and the settlers on the Mosquito shore and the bay of Honduras, and 
called by them the doctor, is thought to be synonymous with this.*—More 
serious consequences have been known to follow the bite of another mite 
related to the above, if not the same species, common in Martinique, and 
ealled there the Béte rouge. When our soldiers in camp were attacked 
by this animal, dangerous ulcers succeeded the symptoms just mentioned, 
which, in several cases, became so bad, that the limb affected was obliged 
to be taken off.4 : 

I was once collecting insects in Norwood, near London, when my hand 
were covered by a number of small hungry ticks, which were so greedy 
after blood, that they penetrated deep into my flesh, giving me no little 
pain; and it was not without difficulty that I extracted them. I suspect 
that this was the dog-tick (Ivodes Ricinus) which is often found on plants ; 
but I am not certain, as ] neglected to examine it, my attention at that 
time being almost wholly given to Coleoptera. Lyonnet seems to have 
been attacked, in one of his entomological excursions, by the same or a 
similar insect, which he broke, so firmly had it fixed itself, in endeavoring 
to extract it; and he was obliged to lay open the place lest an abscess 
should be formed.® But the worst of all the tick tribe is the American 
(Ivodes americanus) described by Professor Kalm. This insect, which is 
related to the preceding,’is found in the woods of North America, and is 

T Personal Narrative, E. T.v. 101. See Mr. Westwood’s description of this insect (which, 
as before observed, he has separated as a distinct genus under the name of Sarcopsylla pene- 
trans) in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 199; and also Mr. Sells’s observations on its economy 
and habits, ii. 196. 

2 Natural Miscell. ii. 1. 42. 

3 Lindley in the Royal Military Chronicle for March 1815, p. 459. 


4 T owe this information to the late Robinson Kittoe, Esq., formerly Clerk of the Cheque 
in the King’s Yard, Woolwich. 5 Lesser L. ii. 222. note *, 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 9] 


equally an enemy to man and beast. They are there so infinitely numerous, 
that if you sit down upon the ground, or upon the trunk of a tree, or walk 
with naked feet or legs, they will cover you, and, plunging their serrated 
rostrum into the bare places of the body, begin to suck your blood, going 
deeper and deeper till they are half buried in the flesh. ‘Though at first 
they occasion no uneasiness, when they have thus made good their settle- 
ment, they produce an intolerable itching, followed by acute pain and large 
tumors. It is now extremely difficult to extract them, the animal rather 
suffering itself to be pulled to pieces than let go its hold ; so that the ros- 
trum and head being often left in the wound, produce an inflammation and 
suppuration which render it deep and dangerous. These ticks are at first 
very small, sometimes scarcely visible, but by suction will swell themselves 
out till they are as big as the end of one’s finger, when they often fall to 
the ground of themselves.'| The serrated haustellum of the ticks, which, 
like the barbed sting of a bee, cannot be extracted unless the animal co- 
operates, is well worth your inspection ; and the species which infests our 
dogs is so common that you will have no difficulty in procuring one for ex- 
amination.” 

I have now introduced you to the principal insects of the Aptera order 
of Linné, which, in spite of all his care and all his power, assail the lord 
of the creation, and make him their food. You will here, however, per- 
haps accuse me of omitting one very prominent annoyer of our comfort 
and repose, which you think belongs to this tribe—the bed-bug (Cimeax 
lectularius). When you are a more practiced entomologist, you will see 
clearly that this, though it has no wings, appertains to another order: 
nevertheless it may be introduced here without impropriety. Though 
now too common and well known in this country, it was formerly a rare 
insect. Had it not, two noble ladies, mentioned by Mouffet, would 
scarcely have been thrown into such an alarm by the appearance of bug- 
bites upon them; which, until their fears were dispelled by their physi- 
cian, who happened also to be a naturalist, they considered as nothing less 
than symptoms of the plague. Being shown the living cause of their 
fright, their fears gave place to mirth and laughter.* Commerce, with 
many good things, has also introduced amongst us many great evils, of 
which noxious insects form no small part ; and one of her worst presents 
were doubtless the disgusting animals now before us. They seem, indeed, 
as the above fact proves, to have been productive of greater alarm at first 
than mischief, at least if we may judge from the change of name which 
took place upon their becoming common. Their original English name 
was Chinche or Wall-louse*; and the term Bug, which is a Celtic word, 
signifying a ghost or goblin, was applied to them after Ray’s time, most 
probably because they were considered as “terrors by night.”° But how- 


1 De Geer, vii. 154. 160. 


* The renowned venomous bug of Persia (Malleh de Mianch) has been ascertained to be 
a species of Argas by Count Fischer de Watheim. . 

3 Theatr. Ins. 270. This happened in 1503; which circumstance refutes Southall’s 
opinion that bugs were not known in England before 1670. 

4 Rai, Hist. Ins. 7. Mouffet, 269. They were called also punez, from the French punaise. 

5 Hence our English word Bug-Bear. In Matthew’s Bible, Ps. xci. 5. is rendered, ‘Thou 
shalt not need to be afraid of any bugs by night.” The word in this sense often occurs in 
Shakspeare, Winter’s Tale, act iil. sc. 2,3. Hen. VI. act v. sc. 2. Hamlet, act v. sc. 2. 
See Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, i. 329. in quoting which work it may be observed 
ths’ the author was a zealous entomologist. (Life in Annual Obituary). 


‘ 


92 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


ever horrible bugs may have been in the estimation of, some, or nauseating 
in that of others, many of the good people of London seem to regard 
them with the greatest apathy, and take very little pains to get rid of 
them ; not generally, however, it is to be hoped, to such an extent as the 
predecessor of a correspondent in Nicholson’s Journal, who found his 
house so dreadfully infested by them, that it resembled the Banian hospital 
at Surat, all his endeavors to destroy them being at first in vain. And 
no wonder; for, as he learned from a neighbor, his predecessor would 
never suffer them to be disturbed or his bedsteads to be removed, till, in 
the end, they swarmed to an incredible degree, crawling up even the walls 
of his drawing-room ; and after bis death millions were found in his bed 
and chamber furniture.” 

The winged insects of the order to which the bed-bug belongs, often 
inflict very painful wounds.—I was once attacked by a small species, 
near Cimex Nemorum L. (Hylophila K.), which put me nearly to as much 
torture as the sting of a wasp. The water boatman (Notonecta glauca), 
an insect related to the Cimicide, which always swims upon its back, 
made me suffer still more severely, as if I had been burned, by the inser- 
tion of its rostrum ; but the wound was not followed by any inflammation ; 
and long before me Willughby had made the same discovery and obser- 
vation.® St. Pierre, in his Voyage to Mauritius, mentions a species of 
bug found in that island, the bite of which is more venomous than the 
sting of a scorpion, and is succeeded by a tumor as big as the egg of a 
pigeon, which continues for four or five days.* You are well acquainted 
with the history and properties of the Raia Torpedo and Gymnotus elec- 
tricus ; but I dare aver, have no idea that any insect possesses their extra- 
ordinary powers.—Y et I can assure you, upon good authority, that Redu- 
vius serratus, commonly known in the West Indies by the name of the 
wheel-bug, can, like them, communicate an electric shock to the person 
whose flesh it touches. ‘The late Major-general Davies, of the Royal 
Artillery, well known as a most accurate observer of nature, and an inde- 
fatigable collector of her treasures, as well as a most admirable painter of 
them, once informed me, that when abroad, having taken up this animal 
and placed it upon his hand, it gave him a considerable shock, as if from 
an electric jar, with its legs, which he felt as high as his shoulders ; and, 
dropping the creature, he observed six marks upon his hand where the six 
feet had stood.° 


1 The Banian hospital at Surat is a most remarkable institution. At my visit, the hospi- 
tal contained horses, mules, oxen, sheep, goats, monkeys, poultry, pigeons, and a variety 
of birds. The most extraordinary ward was that appropriated to rats and mice, bugs, and 
other noxious vermin. The overseers of the hospital frequently hire beggars from the 
streets, for a stipulated sum, to pass a night amongst the fleas, lice, and bugs, on the express 
condition of suffering them to enjoy their feast without molestation, Forbes’s Oriental 
Memoirs. 

2 Nicholson’s Journal, xvii. 40. 

3 Proboscis in cutem intrusa acerrimum dolorem excitat, qui tamen brevi cessat. Rai, 
Hist. Ins. 58. 

4 The Benchucha, or great black bug of the Pampas of South America, a species of 
Reduvius, is a far more obnoxious species than our common bed bug. See C. Darwin’s 
Personal Narrative, iii. 403. 

5 Two similar instances of effects on the human system, resembling electric shocks, pro- 
duced by insects, have been communicated to the Entomological Society by Mr. Yarrell; 
one, mentioned ina letter from Lady de Grey, of Groby, in which the shock was caused b 
a beetle, one of the common Elateridg, and extended from the hand to the elbow on sud- 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 93 


You may now possibly think that I have nearly gone through the cata- 
logue of our personal assailants of the insect tribes. If such, however, is 
your expectation, I fear you will be disappointed, since I have many more, 
and some tremendous ones, to enumerate: but as a small compensation 
for such a detail of evils and injuries to which our species is exposed from 
foes seemingly so insignificant, and of acts of rebellion of the vilest and 
most despised of our subjects against our boasted supremacy, the objects 
to which I shall next call your attention are not, like most of our apterous 
enemies, calculated to excite disgust and nausea when we see them or 
speak of them; nor do they usually steal upon us during the silent hours 
of repose (though I must except here the gnat or mosquito), but are many 
of them very beautiful, and boldly make their attack upon us in open 
day, when we are best able to defend ourselves. Borne on rapid wings, 
wherever they find us, they endeavor to lay us under contribution, and 
the tribute they exact is our blood. Wonderful and various are the wea- 
pons that enable them to enforce their demand. What would you think 
of any large animal that should come to attack you with a tremendous 
apparatus of knives and lancets issuing from its mouth? Yet such are 
the instruments by means of which the fire-eyed and blood-thirsty horse- 
fly (Tabanus L.) makes an incision in your flesh ; and then, forming a - 
siphon of them, often carries off many drops of your blood.’ The pain 
they inflict, when they open a vein, is usually very acute. A fly of this 
kind not only occasioned Mr. Sheppard considerable pain by its bite, but 
also produced swelling and blackness round one eye ; and the flesh of his 
cheek and chin was so enlarged from it as to hang down. And Mr. W. 
S. MacLeay thus describes to me the annoyance he suffered from one of 
them. ‘I went down the other day to the country, and was fairly driven 
dut of it by the Hematopota pluvialis, which attacked me with such fury, 
that although I did not at last venture beyond the door without a veil, my 
face and hands were swelled to that degree as to be scarcely yet recovered 
from the effects of their venom. I was obliged on my return to town to 
stay two days at home. Whenever this insect bites me it has this effect, 
and I have never been able to discover any remedy for the torture it puts 
me to.” In this country, however, the attacks of these flies are usually 
not frequent enough to make them more than a minor “ misery of human 
life ;” but the burning-fly (brudot) or sand-fly of America” and the West 
Indies, which seem to be the same insect, causes a much more intolerable 
anguish, which has been compared to what a red-hot needle or a spark of 
fire would occasion us to endure. Lambert, in his Travels through 
Canada, &c. says, “ They are so very small as to be hardly perceptible 
in their attacks ; and your forehead will be streaming with blood before 
you are sensible of being amongst them*;”—-and Captain Back, in his 
Journey to the Arctic Sea (p. 117.), speaking of the misery occasioned 
by these little tormentors, the brulots (including also mosquitos), observes, 


denly touching the insect; the other, caused by a large hairy lepidopterous caterpillar, 
picked up in South America by Capt. Blakeney, R. N., who felt on touching it a sensation, 
extending up his arm, similar to an electric shock, of such force that he lost the use of the 
arm fora time, and his life was even considered in danger by his medical attendant. 
( Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. iii. proc. viii. xxiii.) 

1 One took eight drops from Reaumur, iv. 230. 2 Bartram’s Travels, 383. 

3 i, 127. The West India sand-fly was noticed by the late Robinson Kittoe, Esq., who ~ 
however did not recollect their fetching blood. 


; 


94 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


“There is certainly no form of wretchedness among those to which the 
chequered life of a Voyageur is exposed, at once so great-and so humili- 
ating, as the torture inflicted by these puny blood-suckers. To avoid 
them is impossible. At last, subdued by pain and fatigue, he throws him- 
self in despair with his face to the earth, and half suffocated in his blanket 
groans away a few hours of sleepless rest.” We have one species (Sto- 
moxys calcitrans), alluded to in a former letter, as so nearly resembling 
the common house-fly, which, though its oral instruments are to appear- 
ance not near so tremendous, is a much greater torment than the horse-fly. 
This little pest, I speak feelingly, incessantly interrupts our studies and 
comfort in showery weather, making us even stamp like the cattle by its 
attacks on our legs; and, if we drive it away ever so often, returning 
again and again to the charge. In Canada they are infinitely worse. “I 
have sat down to write,” says Lambert (who, though he calls it the house- 
fly, is evidently speaking of the Stomoxys), ‘and have been obliged to 
throw away my pen in consequence of their irritating bite, which has 
obliged me every moment to raise my hand to my eyes, nose, mouth and 
ears in constant succession. When I could no longer write, I began to 
read, and was always obliged to keep one hand constantly on the move 
towards my head. Sometimes in the course of a few minutes I would 
take half a dozen of my tormentors from my lips, between which I caught 
them just as they perched.’ 

The swallow-fly (Craterina Hirundinis*), whose natural food is the 
bird after which it is named, has been known to make its repast on the 
human species. One found its way into a bed of the Rev. R. Sheppard, 
where it first, for several nights, sorely annoyed a friend of his, and after- 
wards himself, without their suspecting the culprit. After a close search, 
however, it was discovered in the form of this fly, which, forsaking the 
nest of the swallow, had by some chance taken its station between the 
sheets, and thus glutted itself with the blood of man.—In traveling be- 
tween Edam and Purmerend in North Holland (July 21, 1815), in an 
open vehicle, I was much teased by another bird-fly (Ornithomyia avicu- 
laria) (two individuals of which I caught) alighting on my head, and in- 
serting its rostrum into my flesh.—Mr. Sheppard remarks, as a reason for 
this dereliction of their appropriate food, that no sooner does life depart 
from the bird that these flies infest than they immediately desert it and 
take flight, alighting upon the first living creature that they meet with; 
which if it be not a bird they soon quit, but, as it should seem from the 
above facts, not before they have made a trial how it will suit them as food. 

But of all the insect-tormentors of man, none are so loudly and univer- 
sally complained of as the species of the genus Culex L., whether known 
by the name of gnats or mosquitos.’ Pliny, after Aristotle, distinguishes 


1 Travels, &c. i. 126. 2 See Curtis’s Brit. Ent. t. 122. 

3 It has been generally supposed by naturalists, that the Mosquitos ot America belong to 
the Linnean genus Culex ; but the celebrated traveler Humboldt asserts that the term 
Mosquito, signifying a little fly, is applied there to a Simulium Latr. ( Simulia Meig.), and 
that the Culices, which are equally numerous and annoying, are called Zancudoes, which 
means long legs. The former, he says, are what the French call Moustiques, and the latter 
Maringouins. (Personal Narrative, E. T. v. 93.) Humboldt’s remark, however, refers only 
to South America; Mr. Westwood informing us that Mosquito is certainly applied to a 
species of Culex in the United States, the inhabitants giving the name of dblack-fly to a 
small Simulium. See “An Introduction to the Modern Classitication of Insects, by J. O. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 95 


well between Hymenoptera and Diptera, when he says the former have 
their sting in the taz/, and the latter in the mouth; and that to the one 
this weapon is given as the instrument of vengeance, and to the other of 
avidity! But the instrument of avidity in the genus of which I am 
speaking, is even more terrible than that of vengeance in most insects 
that are armed with it: like the latter also, as appears from the conse- 
quent inflammation and tumor, it instils into its wound a poison ; the princi- 
pal use of which, however, is to render the blood more fluid and fitter for 
suction. ‘This weapon, which is more complex than the sting of hymen- 
opterous insects, consisting of five pieces besides the exterior sheath, some 
of which seem simply lancets, while others are barbed like the spicula of 
a bee’s sting, is at once calculated for piercing the flesh and forming a 
siphon adapted to imbibe the blood.” There are several species of this 
genus whose bite is severe, but none is to be compared to the common 
gnat (Culex pipiens L.), if, as has been generally affirmed, it be synony- 
mous with the mosquito (though, in all probability, several species are con- 
founded under both names); and to this, the most insatiable of blood- 
suckers, I shall principally direct your attention.® 

In this country they are justly regarded as no trifling evil; for they fol- 
low us to all our haunts, intrude into our most secret retirements, assail us 
in the city and in the country, in our houses and in our fields, in the sun 
and in the shade: nay they pursue us to our pillows, and either keep us 
awake by the ceaseless hum of their rapid wings (which, according to the 
Baron C. de Latour, are vibrated 3000 times per minute‘), and their in- 
cessant endeavors to fix themselves upon our face, or some uncovered part 
of our body ; or, if in spite of them we fall asleep, awaken us by the acute 
pain which attends the insertion of their oral stings ; attacking with most 
avidity the softer sex, and trying their temper by disfiguring their beauty. 
But although with us they are usually rather teasing than injurious, yet 
upon some occasions they have approached nearer to the character of a 
plague, and emulated with success the mosquitos of other climates. Thus, 
we are told that in the year 1736 they were so numerous, that vast columns 
of them were seen to rise in the air from Salisbury cathedral, which at a 
distance resembled columns of smoke, and occasioned many people to 
think that the cathedral was on fire. A similar occurrence, in like manner 
giving rise to an alarm of the church being on fire, took place in July 
1812 at Sagan in Silesia. In the following year at Norwich, in May, at 
about six o’clock in the evening, the inhabitants of that city were alarmed 
by the appearance of smoke issuing from the upper window of the spire 
of the cathedral, for which at the time no satisfactory account could be 
given, but which was most probably produced by the same cause. And 


Westwood, F. L. S.” 2 vols. Lond. 1839—1841. (ii. 510.), a work invaluable to the ento- 
mologist both for its systematic details and vast mass of original and collected facts relative 
to the affinities, habits, and economy of insects. 

1 Plin. Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 28. Aristot. Hist. Animal. 1. i.c. 5. 

? Pliny was aware of this double office of the proboscis of a gnat, and has well described 
it. “Telum vero perfodiendo tergori quo spiculavit ingenio? Atque ut in capaci, cum 
cerni non possit exilitas, ita reciproca geminavit arte, ut fodiendo acuminatum pariter 
sorbendoque fistulosum esset.” Hist. Nat. 1. xi. ¢. 2. 

8 Humboldt has described several South American species. Personal Narrative, v. 97 
note. * Engl. Tr. 

4 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 509. 

5 Germar’s Magazin de Entomologie, i. 137. 


' 
96 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


in the year 1766, in the month of August, they appeared in such incredi- 
ble numbers at Oxford as to resemble a black cloud, darkening the air and 
almost totally intercepting the beams of the sun. One day, a little before 
sunset, six columns of them ‘were obseryed to ascend from the boughs of 
an apple-tree, some in a perpendicular and others in an oblique direction, 
to the height of fifty or sixty feet. Their bite was so envenomed, that it 
was attended by violent and alarming inflammation ; and one when killed 
usually contained as much blood as would cover three or four square 
inches of wall. Our great poet Spenser seems to have witnessed a simi- 
lar appearance of them, which furnished him with the following beautiful 
simile :— 

As when a swarme of gnats at eventide 

Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, 

Their murmuring small trumpets sownden wide, 

Whiles in the air their clust’ring army flies, 

That as a cloud doth seem to dim the skies ; 

Ne man nor beast may rest or take repast 

For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries. 

Till the fierce northern wind with blust’ring blast 

Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean casl. 

In Marshland in Norfolk, as I learn from a lady who had an opportunity 
of personal inspection, the inhabitants are so annoyed by the gnats, that 
the better sort of them, as in many hot climates, have recourse to a gauze 
covering for their beds, to keep them off during the night. Whether this 
practice obtains in other fen districts I do not know.” 

But these evils are of small account compared with what other countries, 
especially when we approach the poles or the line, are destined to suffer 
from them: for there they interfere so much with ease and comfort, as to be- 
come one of the worst of pests and a real misery of human life. We may be 
disposed to smile perhaps at the story Mr. Weld relates from General Wash- 
ington, that in one place the mosquitos were so powerful as to pierce through 
his boots* (probably they crept within the boots): but in various regions 
scarcely any thing less impenetrable than leather can withstand their insinuat- 
ing weapons and unwearied attacks. One would at first imagine that regions 
where the polar winter extends its icy reign would not be much annoyed 
by insects : but however probable the supposition, it is the reverse of fact, 
for nowhere are gnats more numerous. These animals, as well as num- 
bers of the T%pularie of Latreille, seem endowed with the privilege of 
resisting any degree of cold, and of bearing any degree of heat. In 
Lapland their numbers are so prodigious as to be compared to a flight of 
snow when the flakes fall thickest, or to the dust of the earth. The 
natives cannot take a mouthful of food, or lie down to sleep in their 
cabins, unless they be fumigated almost to suffocation. In the air you 
cannot draw your breath without having your mouth and nostrils filled 
with them; and unguents of tar, fish-grease, or cream, or nets steeped in 
fetid birch-oil, are scarcely sufficient to protect even the case-hardened 


1 Philos. Trans. 1767, 111. 113. I once witnessed a similar appearance at Maidstone 
in Kent. 

? A small British species of Ceratopogon (one of the midge family of Tipulide) is occa- 
eenaby yey troublesome by settling upon the uncovered parts of the body and sucking 
the blood. ‘ 

8 Weld’s Travels, 8vo. edit. 205. Yet Mouffet affirms the same: “ Morsu crudeles et 
venenati, triplices caligas, imo ocreas, item perforantes.” 81. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 97 


cuticle of the Laplander from their bite. In certain districts of France, 
the accurate Reaumur informs us that he has seen people whose arms 
and legs have become quite monstrous from wounds inflicted by gnats ; 
and in some cases in such a state as to render it doubtful whether amputa- 
tion would not be necessary.” In the neighborhood of the Crimea the 
Russian soldiers are obliged to sleep in sacks to defend themselves from 
the mosquitos; and even this is not a sufficient security, for several of 
them die in consequence of mortification produced by the bites of these 
furious blood-suckers. This fact is related by Dr. Clarke, and to its 
probability his own painful experience enabled him to speak. He informs 
us that the bodies of himself and his companions, in spite of gloves, 
clothes, and handkerchiefs, were rendered one entire wound, and the con- 
sequent excessive irritation and swelling excited a considerable degree of 
fever. In a most sultry night, when not a breath of air was stirring, 
exhausted by fatigue, pain and heat, he sought shelter in his carriage ; 
and, though almost suffocated, could not venture to open a window for 
fear of the mosquitos. Swarms nevertheless found their way into his 
hiding-place: and, in spite of the handkerchiefs with which he had bound 
up his head, filled his mouth, nostrils, and ears. In the midst of his 
torment he succeeded in lighting a lamp, which was extinguished in a 
moment by such a prodigious number of these insects, that their carcases 
actually filled the glass chimney, and formed a large conical heap over 
the burner. The noise they make in flying cannot be conceived by per- 
sons who have only heard gnats in England. It is to all that hear it a 
most fearful sound. Travelers and mariners who have visited warmer 
climates give a similar account of the torments there inflicted by these 
little demons. One traveler in Africa complains that after a fifty miles 
journey they would not suffer him to rest, and that his face and hands 
appeared, from their bites, as if he was infected with the small-pox in its 
worst stage.* In the East, at Batavia, Dr. Arnold, a most attentive and 
accurate observer, relates that their bite is the most venomous he ever felt, 
Occasioning a most intolerable itching, which lasts several days. The 
sight or sound of a single one either prevented him from going to bed for 
a whole night, or obliged him to rise many times. This species, which I 
have examined, is distinct from the common gnat, and appears to be non- 
descript. It approaches nearest to C. annulatus, but the wings are black 
and not spotted. And Captain Stedman in America, as a proof of the 
dreadful state to which he and his soldiers were reduced by them, mentions 
that they were forced to sleep with their heads thrust into holes made in 
the earth with their bayonets, and their necks wrapped round with their 
hammocks.°® 

From Humboldt also we learn that ‘between the little harbor of 
Higuerote and the mouth of the Rio Unare the wretched inhabitants are 
accustomed to stretch themselves on the ground, and pass the night buried 


1 Acerbi’s Travels, ii. 5. 34, 35.51. Linn. Flor. Lapp. 380, 381. Lach. Lapp. ii. 108. 
De Geer, vi. 303, 304. 2 Reaum. iv. 573. 
3 Dr. Clarke’s Travels, i. 388. 4 Jackson’s Maracco, 57. 


5 Travels, ii. 93. Mr. W. S. MacLeay, in a letter I received from him, observed, speak- 
ing of his residence at the Havana: “ The disagreeables are ants, scorpions, mygales and 
mosquitos. The latter were quite a pest on my first arrival within the tropics ; but now I 
mind them about as much as I did gnats in Engiand.” 


9 


98 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


in the sand three or four inches deep, leaving out the head only which 
they cover with a handkerchief.” ‘This illustrious Rivcies has given an 
account in detail of these insect plagues, by which it appears that amongst 
them there are diurnal, crepuscular, and nocturnal species, or genera: the 
Mosquitos or Simulia flying in the day; the Temporaneros, probably a 
kind of Culex flying during twilight; and the Zancudos or Culices in the 
night. So that there is no rest for the inhabitants from their torment day 
or night, except for a short interval between the retreat of one species 
and the attack of another. We learn from this author that the sting or 
bite of the Stmulium is as bad as that of the Stomoxys before noticed.* 

The Rhagio Columbaschenis of Fabricius, a native of Banat and the 
adjacent parts of the banks of the Danube, is a species of Simulium, and 
one of the most obnoxious of all the insects which attack man and domes- 
tic animals. (See Kéllar’s work on Obnoxious Insects; a translation of 
part of which, by the Misses Loudon, has recently been published. ‘The 
work of Pohl and Kéllar on the obnoxious insects of Brazil also contains 
many notices of their attacks upon man.) 

It is not therefore incredible that Sapor, king of Persia, as is related, 
should have been compelled to raise the siege of Nisibis by a plague of 
gnats, which attacking his elephants and beasts of burthen, so caused the 
rout of his army, whatever we may think of the miracle to which it was 
attributed?; nor that the inhabitants of various cities, as Mouffet has col- 
lected from different authors*, should, by an extraordinary multiplication 
of this plague, have been compelled to desert them; or that by their 
power to do mischief, like other conquerors who have been the torment of 
the human race, they should have attained to fame, and have given their 
name to bays, towns, and even to considerable territories.* 

And now, which seems to you the greatest terror, that the forest should 
resound with the roar of the lion or the tiger, or with the hum of the 
gnat? Which evil is most to be deprecated, the neighborhood of these 
ferocious animals, terrible as they are for their cruelty and strength, or to 


? Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, E.T. v.87. Most writers by the term mosquitos mean 
gnats; and for them it is here chiefly employed, but may be regarded as including both 
plagues. 

2 Theodorit. Hist. Eccl. 1. ii. c. 30. 3 Mouffet, 85. Amoreux, 119. 

4 Viz. Mosquito Bay in St. Christopher’s ; Mosquitos, a town in the Island of Cuba ; and 
the Mosquito country in North America. Though in many cases it may be impossible to 
prevent the attacks of gnats, it is certain that a little care would often secure the inmates of 
houses, distant from stagnant waters, from these pests, for which they have solely to thank 
their open water-tubs or cisterns in their gardens, in which they are constantly breeding. 
Dr. Franklin, whose admirable habit of minute observation embraced all subjects, long since 
pointed this out, and I myself found that the gnats which so annoyed usin the house we 
occupied at Pisa late in the autumn of 1830, as to require gauze mosquito curtains to all 
the beds, though it was far distant from the river or any pond, all proceeded from an open 
ornamental stone cistern in the garden, constantly left half full of water; and I am per- 
suaded that to a similar cause may be chiefly attributed the gnats so often found in conti- 
nental towns not situated near to canals or stagnant pools. The remedy is equally obvious 
and easy. Either open water-tubs and cisterns should be proscribed, or a few small fish 
kept in them to destroy the larve of the gnats as fast as they breed. Trees being generally 
found to harbor gnats, are, on this account, banished from the neighborhood of dwelling 
houses in America and other hot countries, to the great loss of the occupants in other res- 

ects; but I have been informed by a friend, that at Trieste it has been observed that 

orse-chestnut trees planted near a house, so far from encouraging gnats, drive them away, 
none ever appearing in houses surrounded with these trees, though abundant where other 
kinds prevail, a fact, which if confirmed in other countries, would be well worth acting 
upon. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 99 


live amidst the polar or tropical myriads of mosquitos, and be subject to 
the torture of their incessant attacks? When you consider that from the 
one, prudence and courage may secure or defend us without any material 
sacrifice of our daily comforts; while to be at rest from the other, we 
must either render ourselves disgusting by filthy unguents, or be suffocated 
by fumigations, or be content to be bound, head, hand, and foot, shut out 
from the respiration of the common air, and even thus scarcely escape 
from their annoyance; you will feel convinced that the former is the more 
tolerable evil of the two, and be inclined to think that those cities, from 
which the lions were driven away by'the more powerful gnats, were no 
great gainers by the exchange.’ With what grateful hearts ought the 
privileged inhabitants of these happy islands to acknowledge and glorify 
the goodness of that kind Providence which has distinguished us from the 
less favored nations of the globe, by what may be deemed an immunity 
from this tormenting pest! for the inroads which they make on our com- 
fort, when contrasted with what so many other people of every climate 
suffer from them, are mere nothing. When we behold on one side of us 
the ravages of the wide-wasting sword, on another those of infectious 
disease or pestilence, on a third famine destroying its myriads, and ona 
fourth life rendered uncomfortable by the terror of “ noisome beasts,” and 
the attack of noxious insects; and when we look at home and see every 
one eating his bread in peace, protected in his enjoyments by equal laws 
without fearing the sword of the oppressor; not scourged by pestilence or 
famine, exposed to the attack of no ferocious animal, and comparatively 
speaking but slightly visited by the annoyance of insect tormentors; and 
especially when we further reflect that it is his mercy and not our merits 
which has induced him thus to overwhelm us with blessings, while other 
countries have been made to drink deep of the cup of his fury, we shall 
see reason for an increased degree of thankfulness and gratitude, and, 
instead of repining, be well content with our lot, though our offences have 
not wholly been passed over, and we have been “beaten with few 
stripes.” 


Besides the insects that seek to make us their food, there are others 
which, although we are apt to regard them with the greatest horror, do not 
attack us with this view, but usually to revenge some injury which they 
have received, or apprehend from us. Foremost in the list of these are 
those with four wings, which, according to the observation of Pliny before 
quoted, carry their weapon, an instrument of revenge, in their tail. These 
all belong to the Linnean order Hymenoptera ; and the tremendous arms 
with which they annoy us, are two darts finer than a hair, furnished on 
their outer side at the end with several barbs not visible to the naked eye, 
and each moving in the groove of a strong and often curved sheath, 
frequently mistaken for the sting, which, when the darts enter the flesh, 
usually injects a drop of subtle venom, furnished from a peculiar vessel in 
which it is secreted, into the wound, occasioning, especially if the darts 
be not extracted, a considerable tumor, accompanied by very acute pain. 
Many insects are thus armed and have this power. ‘Twice I have been 


1 Mouffet, 85. 


100 ‘DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


stung by an Ichneumon ; first by one with a concealed sting, and after- 
wards by another of the family of Pimpla Manifestator, with a very long 
exserted one. I had held the insect by its sting, which it withdrew from 
between my fingers with surprising force, and then, as if in revenge, stung 
me. Pompilus viaticus, one of the spider-wasps, once, in this way, gave 
me acute pain. Mr. W.S. Mac Leay states that at the Havana he was 
once stung by a gigantic pompilus (probably P. Heros), from which he 
suffered a very short-lived pain, but the wound bled as if punctured by a 
pin. The bleeding, he conjectures, carried off the venom. But the 
insects which in this respect principally attract our notice by exciting our 
fears, are the hive-bee, the wasp, and the hornet. ‘The first of these, the 
bee, sometimes manifests an antipathy to particular individuals, whom it 
attacks and wounds without provocation; but the two last, though appa- 
rently the most formidable, are not so ill-tempered as they are conceived 
to be, seldom molesting those who do not first interfere with or disturb 
them. We learn from Scripture that the hornet (but whether it was the 
common species is uncertain) was employed by Providence to drive out 
the impious inhabitants of Canaan, or subdue them under the hands of the 
Israelites..—The effect produced by the sting of these animals is different 
in different persons. ‘To some they occasion only a very slight inconve- 
nience or a momentary pain; others feel the smart of the wounds which 
they inflict for several days, and are thrown into fevers by them; and to 
some they have even proved fatal.2 Yet these insects are certainly, in 
general, but a trifling evil. ‘They become, however, especially wasps, a 
very serious one to many, from the mere dread of being stung by them, 
even though they should not carry their fears to the same length with the 
lady mentioned by Dr. Fairfax*, in the Philosophical Transactions, who 
had such a horror of them that during the season in which they abound in 
houses, she always confined herself to her apartment. An insect of a 
tribe never before suspected of being endowed with such a mode of annoy- 
ance, one of the order Lepidoptera, found at the Cape of Good Hope, is 
said to defend itself when captured by stinging, whence it is there named 
the Bee-moth and it is added that the puncture, which’is very painful, is 
speedily followed by swelling and inflammation.* 

Ants are insects of this order, which, though our indigenous species may 
be regarded as harmless, in some countries are gifted with double means 
of annoyance, both from their sting and their bite. A green kind in New 
South Wales was observed by Sir Joseph Banks to inflict a wound scarcely 
less painful than the sting of a bee.® Another, from the intolerable an- 
guish occasioned by its bite, which resembles that produced by a spark of 
fire and seems attended by venom, is called the fire-ant. Captain Sted- 
man relates that this caused a whole company of soldiers to start and 
jump about as if scalded with boiling water; and its nests were so nume- 
rous that it was not easy to avoid them. We are told of a third species, 
which emulates the scorpion in the malignity of its sting or bite.? Knox, 
in his account of Ceylon, mentions a black ant, called by the natives 


1 Deut. vii. 20. Josh. xxiv. 12, 2? Amoreux, 242. 3 Philos. Trans. i. 201. 

4 Oken’s Jsis, 1831, p. 1917., from a letter received by Dr. Reich, from the Cape of Good 
Hope, quoted in Burmeister’s Manual of Ent. p. 381. 

5 Hawkesworth’s Cook, iii. 223. 

§ Stedman, ii. 94. 7 Bingley, iii. 385. first edit. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 101 


Coddia, which he says “bites desperately, as bad as if a man were burnt 
by a coal of fire; but they are of a noble nature, and will not begin 
unless you disturb them.”’ ‘The reason the Cinghalese assign for the hor- 
rible pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and will serve to amuse you. 
«‘ Formerly these ants went to ask a wife of the Noya, a venomous and 
noble kind of snake ; and because they had such a high spirit to dare to 
offer to be related to such a generous creature, they had this virtue bestow- 
ed upon them, that they should sting after this manner. And if they had 
obtained a wife of the Noya, they should have had the privilege to sting full 
as bad as he.’! Stedman’s story of a large ant that stripped the trees of 
their leaves, to feed, as was supposed, a blind serpent under ground?, is 
somewhat akin to this: as is also another, related to me by a friend of 
mine, of a species of Mantis, now in my cabinet, taken in one of the 
Indian Islands, which, according to the received opinion amongst the 
natives, was the parent of all their serpents. Whence, unless perhaps 
from their noxious qualities, could this idea of a connection between insects 
and these reptiles be derived? But to return from this digression— 
Madame Merian’s Ant of visitation (Atta cephalotes) will be considered 
in a subsequent letter: but I cannot here omit a circumstance mentioned 
by Don Felix de Azara, a Spanish traveler, who confirms her account,— 
that these animals are so alarming and tremendous in their attacks, that if 
they enter a house in the night, the inhabitants are obliged to rise with all 
speed and run off in their shirts. 

I must next direct your attention to an insect, which perhaps more than 
any other has been in every age an object of terror and abhorrence—I 
mean the redoubted scorpion. And though I shall not, with Aristotle, tells 
you of Persian kings employing armies for several days in destroying 
them ; or, with Pliny, of countries that they have depopulated ; yet my 
account will not be devoid of that species of interest which the dread of 
its power to do us injury imparts to any object. Could you see one of 
these ferocious animals, perhaps a foot in length, a size to which they 
sometimes attain, advancing towards you in their usual menacing attitude, 
with its claws expanded, and its many-jointed tail turned over its head ; 
were your heart ever so stout, I think you would start back and feel a 
horror come across you; and though you knew not the animal, you would 
conclude that such an aspect of malignity must be the precursor of ma- 
lignant effects. Nor would you be mistaken, as you will presently see. 
This alarming animal, though, like hymenopterous insects, it is armed with 
a sting, is in no respect related to that order, and forms the only genus, 
at present known, of the others that is soarmed. Even its sting is totally 
different from that of bees, wasps, and other Hymenoptera, being more 
analogous to the venomous tooth of serpents; it wounds us with no barbed 
darts concealed in a sheath, but only with a simple incurved mucro ter- 
minating an ampullaceous joint. ‘Two orifices, or, according to some, 
three, are said to instil the poison, which, we are informed, is sometimes 
as white as milk. This venom in our European species is seldom attended, 
except to minor animals, by any very serious consequences ; yet when it 
is communicated by the scorpion of warmer climates it produces more 


? Knox’s Ceylon, 24. 2 Stedman, ii. 142. 
O* 


102 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


baneful effects. The sting of certain kinds commen in South America 
causes fevers, numbness in various parts of the body, tumors in the 
tongue, and dimness of sight, which symptoms last from twenty-four to 
forty-eight hours. The only means of saving the lives of our soldiers 
who were stung by them in Egypt, was amputation. One species is said 
to occasion madness ; and the black scorpion, both of South America and 
Ceylon, frequently inflicts a mortal wound.'| No known animal is more 
cruel and ferocious in its manners; they kill and devour their own young 
without pity as soon as they are born, and they are equally savage to their 
fellows when grownup. ‘Terrible however and revolting as these creatures 
appear, we are gravely told by Naudé, that there is a species of scorpion 
in Italy which is domesticated, and put between the sheets to cool the 
beds during the heats of summer! !? 

I must next say something of insects that annoy us solely by their jaws. 
Of this description is G'aleodes araneotdes, which is related to the scorpion, 
although devoid of a sting. The bite of this animal, which is a native of 
the Cape of Good Hope and of Russia¥, is represented to be often fatal 
both to man and beast. Another species of Galeodes is described by Pro- 
fessor Lichtenstein, which from the trivial namethat hehas given it (fata- 
lis), may be supposed to be as venomous as the former.* 

The bite of one of the centipedes (Scolopendra morsitans)—the under- 

jaws, or rather arms, of which are armed with a strong claw, furnished 
like the sting of the scorpion with an orifice visible under a common lens, 
from which poison issues—is less tremendous than that of the animal last 
mentioned : but though not mortal, its wounds are more painful than those 
“produced by the sting of the scorpion ; and as these animals creep every 
where, even into beds, they must be very annoying in warm climates 
where they abound. Dr. Martin Lister in his Travels, has given us a 
figure of an insect related to this genus, that he saw in Plumier’s collec- 
tion, which appears to have been eighteen inches in length, and three quar- 
ters‘of an inch in width, having ninety-five legs on each side, the first 
eight of which are armed with double claws, and two inches of the tail 
being without legs. It may forma distinct genus, and is probably a 
native of South America. Yet even this monstrous insect is nothing to 
those at Carthagena, mentioned by Ulloa (if indeed we may credit his 
account, or if his translator has not mistaken his meaning), which some- 
times exceeded a yard in length and five inches in breadth! The bite of 
this gigantic serpent-like creature, he tells us, is mortal, as well it may, if 
a timely remedy be not applied. From its cylindrical form it should be a 
Julus.° 

In this catalogue of noxious insects I must not omit those which every 
where force themselves upon our notice, and are viewed with general dis- 
gust. I mean the numerous family of Arachne, the insidious spiders. 
Few of these, however, are really personal assailants of man. ‘The prin- 


1 Ulloa’s Voy. i. 61, 62. Dr. Clarke’s Travels, i. 486. Amoreux, 197. Mr. W. S. Mac- 
Leay relates to me that soon after his arrival at the Havana he was stung by an immense 
scorpion, but was agreeably surprised to find the pain considerably less than the sting of a 
wasp, and of incomparably shorter duration. 
ia — Anecdotes, 427, See on the subject of Scorpions, Amoreux, 41—54. 

6—205. 

3 Fab. Suppl. 294. 2, 4 Catal. Ham. 1797, 151—195. 5 Ulloa’s Voyage, i. 61. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 103 


«cipal is that which has given rise to so much discussion, and has so much 
employed the pens of naturalists and physicians—the famous Tarantula 
(Lycosa Tarantula). The effects ascribed to its wounds, and their won- 
derful cure supposed to be wrought by music and dancing, have long been 
celebrated: but after all there seems to have been more of fraud than of 
truth in the business; and the whole evil appears to consist in swelling 
and inflammation. Dr. Clavitio submitted to be bitten by this animal, and 
no bad effects ensued ; and the Count de Borch,a Polish nobleman, bribed 
aman to undergo the same experiment, in whom the only result was a 
swelling in the hand, attended by intolerable itching. The fellow’s sole 
remedy was a bottle of wine, which charmed away all his pain without 
the aid of pipe and tabor.! 

There. is however a spider (Theridium 13-gutiatum) the bite of which 
is said to be very dangerous, and even mortal. Thiébaut de Berneaud, 
in his Voyage to Elba®, affirms that in the Volterrano he knew that several 
country people and domestic animals died in consequence of it. And, 
according to Mr. Jackson, a spider, called there the Tendaraman, is found 
in Marocco, which has venomous powers equally formidable. The bite of 
this insect, which is about the size and color of a hornet but rounder, and 
spins a web so fine as to be almost invisible, is said to be so poisonous that 
the person bitten survives but a few hours. In the cork forests the sports- 
man, eager in his pursuit of game, frequently carries away on his garments 
this fatal insect, which is asserted always to make towards the head before 
inflicting its wound.? 


I suspect you will think this list long enough ; and I believe it includes 
the most remarkable insects that assail the surface of our bodies, to answer 
either the demands of hunger or the stimulus of revenge. There is how- 
ever a third class of insect annoyers, as I observed at the beginning of this 
letter, which, though they neither make us their food, nor attack us under 
the impulse of fear or revenge, incommode us extremely in other ways. 
These must now be detailed to you. 

How extremely unpleasant is the sensation which that very minute fly 
(Thrips physapus) excites in sultry weather, merely by creeping over our 
skin! I have sometimes found this almost intolerable. A similar torment 
reckoned by Ulloa, a kind of Mosquito, infests the inhabitants of Cartha- 
gena in South America. They are there called Mantas Blancas, and 
creeping between the threads of the gauze curtains that keep off the for- 
mer pest, though they do not bite, occasion an itching that is dreadfully 
tormenting.* But these are nothing compared with the teasing attacks of 
another gnat (Simulium reptans), which, as Linné informs us, who misnam- 
ed it a Cules, is so incredibly numerous in Lapland, as entirely to cover a 
man’s body, turning a white dress into a black one, occupying the whole 
atmosphere, filling the mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears of travelers, and thus 
preventing respiration, and almost choking them. . These little animals, he 


? Amoreux. 217.226. See also 67—70. 7 dl, 3 Jackson’s Marocco, second edit. 

* Ulloa, i. 64. Probably the Cafafi, a white fly noticed by Humboldt, is synonymous 
with this of Ulloa, which could only be prevented from creeping between the threads of the 
curtains by keeping them wet. Personal Narrative, E. T. v. 107. 


104 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


says, do not bite, but torture incessantly by their gitillation.—In New 
South Wales a small ant was observed by Sir Joseph Banks, inhabiting 
the roots of a plant, which when disturbed rushed out by myriads, and 
running over the uncovered parts of the body, produced a sensation of 
this kind that was worse than pain. 

The common house-fly is with us often sufficiently annoying at the close 
of summer, so as to have led the celebrated Italian Ugo Foscolo, when 
residing here, tocall it one of his three ‘“ miseries of life.”? But we know 
nothing of it as a tormentor compared with the inhabitants of southern 
Europe.—“I met (says Arthur Young in his interesting Travels through 
France) between Pradelles and Thuytz, mulberries and flies at the same 
time; by the term flies I mean those myriads of them which form the 
most disagreeable circumstance of the southern climates. They are the 
first torments in Spain, Italy, and the Olive district of France: it is not 
that they bite, sting or hurt, but they buzz, tease, and worry ; your mouth, 
eyes, ears, and nose, are full of them: they swarm on every eatable,— 
fruit, sugar, milk, every thing is attacked by them in such myriads, that if 
they are not incessantly driven away by a person who has nothing else to 
do, to eat a meal is impossible. ‘They are however caught on prepared 
paper and other contrivances with so much ease and in such quantities, 
that were it not from negligence, they could not abound in such incredible 
quantities. If I farmed in these countries, I think I should manure four 
or five acres every year with dead flies—I have been much surprised that 
the late learned Mr. Harmer should think it odd to find, by writers who 
treated of southern climates, that driving away flies was an object of im- 
portance. Had he been with me in Spain and in Languedoc in July and 
August, he would have been very far from thinking there was any thing 
odd in it.’ 


) Lach. Lapp. i. 208,209. Fl. Lapp. 382, 383. It appears, however, from other authors, 
that they do bite. 

2 Annual Obituary, 1828, p. 393. 

3 Young’s Travels in France, i. 298. These flies are equally troublesome and tormenting 
in Sweden (see Am@r Acad. iii. 343.), and also in the United States, where Mr. Stewart and 
Capt. Marryat make frequent and grievous complaints of them, the latter asserting that in 
some places they were fifty to the square inch, as I believe they literally were in a small 
inn where we took breakfast in September 1830, on our road to Chamouni from Geneva. 

It is a remarkable, and, as yet, unexplained fact, that if nets of thread or string with 
meshes a full inch square, be stretched over the open windows of a room in summer or 
autumn, when flies are the greatest nuisance, not a single one will venture to enter from 
without, so that by this simple plan a house may be kept free from these pests, while the 
adjoining ones which have not had nets applied to their windows, will swarm with them, 
In order, however, that the protection should be efficient, it is necessary that the rooms to 
which it is applied should have the light enter by one side only ; for in those which have a 
thorough-light the flies pass through the meshes without scruple. For a fuller account of 
these singular facts, the reader is referred toa paper by W. Spence in Trans. Ent. Soc. 
Lond. vol. i. p.1., and also to one in the same work, vol. ti. p. 45. by the Rev. E. Stanley, 
now Lord Bishop of Norwich, who having made some of the experiments suggested by 
Mr. Spence, found that by extending over the outside of his windows nets of a very fine 
pack-thread with meshes 1 1-4 inch to the square, so fine and comparatively invisible that 
there was no apparent diminution either of light or the distant view, he was enabled for the 
remainder of the summer and autumn to enjoy the fresh air with open windows without 
the annoyance he had previously experienced from the intrusion of flies, ofien so trouble- 
some that he was obliged on the hottest days to forego the luxury of admitting the air by 
even partially raising the sashes. “But no sooner (he observes) had I set my nets than I 
was relieved from my disagreeable visitors. I could perceive and hear them hovering on 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 105 


Our friend Captain Green, of the sixth regiment of the East India 
Company’s native troops, relates to me, that in India, when the mangoes 
are ripe, which is the hottest part of the summer, a very minute black fly 
makes its appearance, which, because it flies in swarms into the eyes, is 
very troublesome, and causes much pain, is called there the eye-fly. At 
this season the eyes are attacked by a disease, supposed to be occasioned 
by eating the mangoes, but more probably the result of the irritation pro- 
duced by the fly in question, which, however, they admit, carries the in- 
fection from one person to another. 

You know that the hairs taken from the pods of Dolichos prurtens and 
urens L., commonly called Cowhage and Cow-itch', occasion a most vio- 
lent itching, but perhaps are not aware that those of the caterpillars of 
several moths will produce the same disagreeable effect. One of these 
is the procession moth (Cnethocampa processionea) of which Reaumer has 
given so interesting an account. In consequence of their short stiff hairs 
sticking in his skin, after handling them, he suffered extremely for several 
days; and being ignorant at first of the cause of the itching, and rubbing 
his eyes with his hands, he brought on a swelling of the eyelids, so that 
he could scarcely open them. Ladies were affected even by going too 
near the nest of the animal, and found their necks full of troublesome 
tumors, océasioned by short hairs, or fragments of hair, brought by the 
wind.? Of this nature also is the famous Pityocampa of the ancients, the 
moth of the fir (Cnethocampa Pityocampa), the hairs of which are said 
to occasion a very intense degree of pain, heat, fever, itching, and rest- 
lessness. It was accounted by the Romans a very deleterious poison, as 
is evident from the circumstance of the Cornelian law “ De sicariis” 
being extended to persons who administered Pityocampa. 


the other side of my barriers ; but though they now and then settled on the meshes, I do 
not recollect a single instanceof one venturing to cross the boundary.” ~ ; 

It is singular, too, as was first pointed out by Mr. W. B. Spence (Ent. Trans. i. 7.) that 
Herodotus 2200 years ago stated that the Egyptian fishermen protected themselves in a 
similar manner from the attacks of mosquitos by spreading their fishing nets over their 
beds, a fact which has greatly puzzled all his commentators, who, not conceiving the possi- 
bility of mosquitos being kept off by fishing-nets which must necessarily have wide meshes, 
have supposed the father of history to have alluded to some protection of fine linen similar 
to the gauze nets now used against these insects. But in this, as in so many other instances, 
the supposed error is not that of Herodotus, but of his commentators, who, ignorant of the 
fact above related as to flies being excluded by wide-meshed nets, could not conceive of it 
in the case of mosquitos; yet, in confirmation of its accuracy, I have been told by a friend 
that he was assured by a gentleman, who had traveled in America, that he had often had 
mosquito nets with meshes an inch square put over his bed, and had found them a perfect 
security from their bites, though, as is well known, they will creep through any small hole 
in an ordinary gauze net. 

In concluding this long note it may be observed that the number of house flies might be 
greatly lessened in large towns, if the stable dung in which their larve are chiefly supposed 
to feed, were kept in pits closed by trap doors, so that the females could not deposit their 
eggs init. At Venice where no horses are kept, it is said there are no house flies, a state- 
ment Sy I regret not having heard before being there, that I might have inquired as to 
its truth. 

1 Cowhage has been administered with success as an anthelmintic, as has likewise spun 
glass pounded ; the spicula of these substances destroying the worms. The hair of the 
caterpillars here alluded to, and perhaps also of the larva of Euprepia Caja (the Tiger- 
Moth), might probably be equally efficacious. 

2 Reaum. ii. 191. 195. According to Dr. Nicholai, the processionary caterpillars also 
secrete from the external surface of their skin a sharp juice which assumes a farinaceous 
form, and is very injurious to those that inspire it, causing workmen, who are occupied in 
woods where the caterpillars are numerous, to sicken very rapidly. (Burmeister, Manual 
of Ent. 510.) 3 Mouffet, 185. Plin. Hist. Nat, 1. xxxviil.c. 9. Amoreux, 158. 


106 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


In these cases the injury is the consequence of ixgitation produced by 
the hair of the animal ; but there are facts on record, which prove that 
the juices of many insects are equally deleterious. Amoreux, from a work 
of Turner, an English writer on cutaneous diseases, has given the follow- 
.ing remarkable history of the ill effects produced by those of spiders. 
When Turner was a young practitioner, he was called to visit a woman, 
whose custom it was, every time she went into the cellar with a candle, 
to burn the spiders and their webs. She had often observed, when she 
thus cruelly amused herself, that the odor of the burning spiders had so 
much affected her head, that all objects seemed to turn round, which was 
occasionally succeeded by faintings, cold sweats, and slight vomitings : 
but, notwithstanding this, she found so much pleasure in tormenting these 
poor animals, that nothing could cure her of this madness, till she met 
with the following accident: the legs of one of these unhappy spiders 
happened to stick in the candle, so that it could not disengage itself; and 
the body at length bursting, the venom was ejaculated into the eyes and 
upon the lips of its persecutrix. In consequence of this, one of the for- 
mer became inflamed, the latter swelled excessively, even the tongue and 
gums were slightly affected, and a continual vomiting attended these 
symptoms. In spite of every remedy the swelling of the lips continued 
to increase, till at length an old woman, by the simple application for 
fifteen days of the leaves and juice of plantain, together with some spider’s 
web, ran away with all the glory of the cure. Ulloa gives us a remark- 
able account of a species of spider, or perhaps mite, of a fiery red color, 
common in Popayan, called Coya or Coyba, and usually found in the 
corners of walls and among the herbage, the venom of which is of such 
malignity, that on crushing the insect, if any fall on the skin of either 
man or beast, it immediately penetrates into the flesh, and causes large 
tumors, which are soon succeeded by death. Yet, he further observes, 
if it be crushed between the palms of the hands, which are usually callous, 
no bad consequence ensues. People who travel along the valleys of the 
Neyba, where these insects abound, are warned by their Indian attendants, 
if they feel any thing stinging them, or crawling on their neck or face, 
not so much as to lift up their hand to the place, the texture of the Coya 
being so delicate that the least force causes them to burst, without which 
there is no danger, as they seem otherwise harmless animals. The tra- 
veler points out the spot where he feels the creature to one of his com- 
panions, who, if it be a Coya, blows it away. If this account does not 
exaggerate the deleterious quality of the juices of this insect, it is the most 
venomous animal that is known; for he describes it as much smaller than 
a bug. The only remedy to which the natives have recourse for prevent- 
ing the ill effects arising from its venom is, on the first appearance of the 
swelling, to swing the patient over the flame of straw or long grass, which 
they do with great dexterity : after this operation he is reckoned to be out 
of danger.°—The poisoned arrows which Indians employ against their 

1 Amoreux, 210—212. 

2 Ulloa’s Voyage, b. vi. c. 3. Hamilton ( Travels in Colombia, as quoted in the Literary 
Gazette, April 24, 1827) also mentions a spider called the Caya, rather large, found in the 
broken ground and among the rocks, from the body of which a poison so active is emitted, 
that men and mules have died in an hour or two after the venomous moisture had fallen on 


them. This is evidently the same insect with that mentioned by Ulloa, and confirms the 
above account of its venomous effects. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 107 


enemies have been long celebrated... The Coya may, in the western 
world, have furnished the poison for this purpose. An author quoted in 
Lesser tells us that an ant as big as a bee is sometimes used, and that 
the wound inflicted by weapons tinctured with their venom is incurable. 
Patterson also gives a recipe by which the natives of the southern extre- 
mity of Africa prepare what they reckon the most effectual poison for the 
point of their arrows. ‘They mix the juice of a species of Euphorbia, 
and a caterpillar that feeds on a kind of sumach (hus L.), and when the 
mixture is dried it is fit for use.’ 

And now [ think you will allow that I have made out a tolerable list 
of insects that attack or annoy man’s body externally, and a sufficiently 
doleful history of them. That the subject, however, may be complete, I 
shall next enumerate those that, not content with afflicting him with ex 
terior pain or evil, whether on the surface or under the skin, bore into his 
flesh, descend even into his stomach and viscera, derange his whole system, 
and thus often occasion his death. The punitive insects here employed 
are usually larve of the various orders, and they are the cause of that 
genus of diseases I before noticed, and proposed to call Scolechiasis. 

I shall begin my account with the first order of Linné, because people 
in general seem not aware that any beetles make their way into the human 
stomach. Yet there is abundant evidence, which proves beyond contro- 
versy that the meal-worm (Tenebrio Molitor), although its usual food is 
flour, has often been voided both by male and female patients; and in one 
instance is stated to have occasioned death.* How these grubs should get 
into the stomach it is difficult to say—perhaps the eggs may have been 
swallowed in some preparation of flour. But that the animal should be 
able to sustain the heat of this organ, so far exceeding the temperature to 
which it is usually accustomed, is the most extraordinary circumstance of 
all_—Dr. Martin Lister, who to the skill of the physician added the most 
profound knowledge of nature, mentions an instance, communicated to him 
by Mr. Jessop, of a girl who voided three hexapod larve similar to what 
are found in the carcases of birds*, probably belonging either to the genus 
Dermestes, or Anthrenus: and in the German Ephemerides the case also 
of a girl is recorded, from an abscess in the calf of whose leg crept black 
worms resembling beetles.‘ 

The larve of some beetle, as appears from the description, seem to have 
been ejected even from the Jungs. Four of these, of which the largest 
was nearly three quarters of an inch long, were discovered in the mucus 
expelled after a severe fit of coughing by a lady afflicted with a pulmona- 
ry disease ; and similar larve of a smaller size were once afterwards dis- 
charged in the same way.° 

No one would suppose that caterpillars, which feed upon vegetable 


1 Waterton ( Wanderings in S. America, 53.) gives the recipe by which the Macousho 
Indians prepare the pvison, in which they dip their arrows. It consists of a vine called the 
Wourali, which is the principal ingredient ; the roots and stalks of some other plants; two 
species of ants, the sting of one of which is so venomous that it produces a fever ; a quan- 
tity of the strongest Indian pepper (Capsicum), and the pounded fangs of two kinds of 
serpents. , 

* Tulpius, Obs. Med. 1. ii. c. 51. t. 7. f. 3. Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journ. n. 35. 42—48. 
Derham, Physic. Theol. 378. note b. Lowthrop, Philos. Trans. iii. 135. 

3 Philos. Trans, 1665, x. 391. Shaw’s Abridg. ii. 224. 

4 Mead, Med. Sacr. 105. & London Medical Revier, v. 340. 


108 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


substances, could be met with alive in the stomach; yet Dr. Lister gives 
an account of a boy who vomited up several, which, he observes, had six- 
teen legs.! The eggs perhaps might have been swallowed in salad; and, 
as vegetables make a part of most people’s daily diet, enough might have 
passed into the stomach to support them when hatched.—Linné tells us 
that the caterpillar of a moth (Aglossa pinguinalis), common in houses, 
has also been found in a similar situation, and is one of the worst of our 
insect infesters.—In a very old tract, which gives a figure of the insect, a 
caterpillar of the almost incredible length of the middle finger is said to 
have been voided from the nostrils of a young man long afflicted with 
dreadful pains in his head.*W—But the most extraordinary account with 
respect to lepidopterous larve (unless he has mistaken his insects) is given 
by Azara, the Spanish traveler before quoted; who says that in South 
America there is a large brown moth, which deposits its young in a kind 
of saliva upon the flesh of persons who sleep naked; these introduce 
themselves under the skin without being perceived, where they occasion 
swelling attended by inflammation and violent pain. When the natives dis- 
cover it, they squeeze out the larve, which usually amount to five or six.° 
But amongst all the orders, none is more fruitful in devourers of man 
than the Diptera. The Bot-flies (@strus L.) you have, doubtless, often 
heard of, and how sorely it annoys our cattle and other quadrupeds cw : 
I suspect have no notion that there is a species appropriated to man. e 
existence, indeed, of this species seems to have been overlooked by ento- 
mologists (though it stands in Gmelin’s edition of the Systema Nature’, 
upon the authority of the younger Linné), till Humboldt and Bonpland 
mentioned it again. Speaking of the low regions of the torrid zone, where 
the air is filled with those myriads of mosquitos which render uninhab- 
itable a great and beautiful portion of the globe, they observe that to these 
may be joined the Cstrus Hominis, which deposits its eggs in the skin of 
man, causing there painful tumors.? Gmelin says that it remains beneath 
the skin of the abdomen six months, penetrating deeper, if it be disturbed, 
and becoming so dangerous as sometimes to occasion death. The imago 
he describes as being of a brown color, and about the size of the common 
house-fly ; so that it is a small species compared with the rest of the 
genus.© Even the gad-fly of the ox, leaving its proper food, has been 
known to oviposit in the jaw of a woman, and the bots produced from the 
eggs finally caused her death.” Other flies also of various kinds thus pen- 
etrate into us, either preying upon our flesh, or getting into our intestines. 


1 Philos. Trans. ubi supra. 

* Fulvius Angelinus et Vincentius Alsarius, De verme admirando per nares egresso. Ra- 
venne, 1610. 

3 Azara, 217. I cannot help suspecting this to be synonymous with the C2strus Hominis 
next mentioned. . 

4 From Pallas, N. Nord. Beytr. i. 157. 

5 Essai sur la Geograph. des Plantes, 136. 

6 For an investigation of the question, whether man is attacked by a distinct species of 
Gstrus, see a report on the statements of MM. Roulin, Howship, Say, Guerin, &c., made 
to L Academie des Sciences, 1833, by MM. Isidore Geofiry Saint Hilaire, and Dumeril (copied 
in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ii. 518.), who, on the whole, though with some hesitation, pro- 
nounce for the affirmative. Yet most of the facts passed in review seem rather to support 
the idea that species of C2strus, whose proper abode is in other animals, occasionally attack 
man. 

7 Clark in Linn. Trans. iii. 323. note. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 109 


Leeuwenhoek mentions the case of a woman whose leg had been enlarg- 
ing with glandular bodies for some years. Her surgeon gave him one that 
he had cut from it,in which were many small maggots: these he fed with 
flesh till they assumed the pupa, when they produced a fly as large as the 
flesh-fly..—A patient of Dr. Reeve of wich, after suffering for some 
time great pain, was at last relieved by voiding a considerable number*of 
maggots, which agree precisely with those described by De Geer as the 
larve of his Musca domestica minor (Anthomyia canicularis Meig.), a fly 
which he speaks of as very common in apartments.*—In Paraguay the 
flesh-flies are said to be uncommonly numerous and noxious. Azara 
relates® that, after a storm, when the heat was excessive, he was assailed 
by such an army of them, that in less than half an hour his clothes were 
quite white with their eggs, so that he was forced to scrape them off with 
a knife; adding, that he has known instances of persons, who, after having 
bled at the nose in their sleep, were attacked by the most violent head- 
aches: when at length several great maggots, the offspring of these flies, 
issuing from their nostrils, gave them relief.—In Jamaica a large blue fly 
buzzes about the sick in the last stages of fever; and when they sleep or 
doze with their mouths open, the nurses find it very difficult to prevent 
these flies from laying their eggs in the nose, mouth, or gums. An in- 
stance is recorded of a lady, who after recovering from a fever, fell a vic- 
tim to the maggots of this fly, which from the nose found their way 
through the os cribriforme into the cavity of the skull, and afterwards into 
the brain. One of the most shocking cases of Scolechiasis I ever met 
with is related in Bell’s Weekly Messenger in the following words: “On 
Thursday, June 25, died at Asbornby (Lincolnshire), John Page, a pau- 
per belonging to Silk-Willoughby, under circumstances truly singular. 
He being of a restless disposition, and not choosing to stay in the parish 
workhouse, was in the habit of strolling about the neighboring villages, 
subsisting on the pittance obtained from door to door: the support he 
usually received from the benevolent was bread and meat; and after sat- 
isfying the cravings of nature, it was his custem to deposit the surplus 
provision, particularly the meat, betwixt his shirt and skin. Having a 
considerable portion of this provision in store, so deposited, he was taken 
rather unwell, and laid himself down in a field in the parish of Screding- 
ton—when from the heat of the season at that time, the meat speedily 
became putrid and was of course struck by the flies: these not only pro- 
ceeded to devour the inanimate pieces of flesh, but also literally to prey 
upon the living substance ; and when the wretched man was accidentally 
found by some of the inhabitants, he was so eaten by the maggots that 
his death seemed inevitable. After clearing away as well as they were 
able these shocking vermin, those who found Page conveyed him to As- 


} Leeuw. Epist. Oct. 17, 1687, ubi supra. De Geer, vi. 26, 27. 

2 Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journ. 3p. 216. 

4 Lempriere, On the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica, ii. 182. See Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. 
i. proc. xlvi. in which various cases are recorded by W. Sells, Esq. (an acute observer, 
whose untimely death entomology has recently had to deplore), as coming under his own 
observation in Jamaica, of flies being hatched in the human body ; in one instance, in a 
neglected blister on the chest ; in another, in the gums and inside of the cheek ; in a third, 
in the ear; and in a fourth, in the passages of the nostrils, out of which the negro who was 
the sufferer counted not fewer than 235 larve (of, Mr. Sell believes, the blue-bottle-fly), 
which in a fortnight dropped out by applications of oil and tobacco smoke. 


10 ° 


110 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


bornby, and a surgeon was immediately procured, who declared that his 
body was in such a state that dressing it must be little short of instantane- 
ous death ; and in fact the man did survive the operation but a few hours. 
When first found, and again when examined by the surgeon, be presented 
a sight loathsome in the extreme; white maggots of enormous size were 
crawling in and upon his body, which they had most shockingly mangled, 
and the removing of the external ones served only to render the sight 
more horrid.”4—A medical friend of mine, at Ipswich, gave me this win- 
ter an apode larva, voided by a person of that place with his urine, which 
I now preserve in spirits, and can show you when you visit me. It 
appears to me to belong to the Diptera order, yet not to the fly tribes 
(Tanystoma Latr.), but rather to the Ttpularie of that author, with which 
however it does not seem to agree so entirely as to take away all doubt. 
It is a very singular larva, and I can find none in any author that I have 
had an opportunity of consulting which at all resembles it. That you 
may know it, should you chance to meet with it, I shall here describe it. 
Body, three fourths of an inch in length, and about a line in breadth ; 
opaque, of a pale yellow color; cylindrical, tapering somewhat at each 
extremity ; consisting of twenty articulations without the head: head red- 
dish brown, heart-shaped, much smaller than the following joint; armed 
with two unguiform mandibles ; with a biarticulate palpus attached exte- 
riorly to the base of each. ‘These mandibles appear to be moved by a 
narrow black central tendon under the dorsal skin, terminating a little 
beyond the base of the first segment; besides this, there are four others, 
two on each side of it, the outer ones diverging, much slenderer, and very 
short. The last or anal joint of the body very minute; exserting two 
short, filiform horns, or rather respiratory organs. I could discover, in this 
animal, no respiratory plates, such as are found in the larve of Muscide 
&c., nor were the trachee visible. When given to me, it was alive and 
extremely active, writhing itself into various contortions with great agility. 
It moved, like other dipterous larve, by means of its mandibles. Upon 
wetting my fingers more than once, to take it up when it had fallen from 
a table upon which it was placed, the saline taste with which it was imbued 
was so powerful that it was some time before it was dissipated from my 
mouth.2 [I shall only mention one more instance, because it is a singular 
one. The larva of Helophilus pendulus, a fly peculiarly formed by nature 
for inhabiting fluids, has been found in the stomach of a woman.® 

You will smile when I tell you that I have met with the prescription of 
a famous urine-doctor, in which he recommends to his credulous patient 
to take a certain number of sow bugs per diem, by this name distinguish- 
ing, as I suppose, the pillmillepede (Armadillo vulgaris), once a very 
favorite remedy. What effect they produced in this case I was not inform- 
ed; but the learned Bonnet relates that he had seen a certificate of an 
English physician, dated July 1763, stating that, some time before, a 


' In passing through this parish in the spring of 1814,1I inquired of the mail-coachman 
whether he had heard of this story; and he said the fact was well known. 

2 Specimens of a dipterous larva, of which, like the above, several had been discharged 
with the urine of a patient, were exhibited to the Entomological Society, April 4, 1840, by 
Professor Owen, who pointed out the great singularity of the case, and the difficulty of 
accounting for the existence of the larva in the bladder. (Proceedings of Ent. Soc. Lond. 
p. 7.) 3 Philos. Mag. ix. 366. 


DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. lll 


young woman who had swallowed these animals alive, as is usually done, 
threw up a prodigious number of them of all sizes, which must have bred 
in her stomach.'—Another apterous species appears to have been detected 
in a still more remarkable situation. Hermann, the author of the admira- 
ble Mémoire Apterologique, whose untimely death is so much to be 
lamented, informs us that an Acarus figured and described in his work (A. 
marginatus), was observed by his artist running on the corpus callosum 
of the brain of a patient in the military hospital at Strasbourg, which had 
been opened but a minute before, and the two hemispheres and the pia 
mater just separated. Headds that this is not the first time that insects 
have been found in the brain. Cornelius Gemma, in his Cosmocritica, p. 
241., says that on dissecting the brain of a woman there were found in it 
abundance of vermicles and punatses.” 

It was customary in many countries in ancient times to punish certain 
malefactors by exposing them to be devoured by wild beasts: but to ex- 
pose them to insects for the same purpose was a refinement in cruelty, 
which seems to have been peculiar to the despots of Persia. We are 
informed that the most severe punishment amongst the Persians was that 
of shutting up the offender between two boats of equal size; they laid 
him in one of them upon his back, and covered him with the other, his 
hands, feet, and head being left bare. His face, which was placed full in 
the sun, they moistened with honey, thus inviting the flies and wasps, 
which tormented him no less than the swarms of maggots that were bred 
in his excrements and body, and devoured him to the very entrails. He 
was compelled to take as much food as was necessary to support life, and 
thus existed sometimes for several days. Plutarch informs us, that Mithri- 
dates, whom Artaxerxes Longimanus condemned to this punishment, lived 
seventeen days in the utmost agony ; and that, the uppermost boat being 
taken off at his death, they found his flesh all consumed, and myriads of 
worms gnawing his bowels.? Could any natural objects be made more 
horrible and effectual instruments of torture than insects were in this most 
diabolical invention of tyranny ?4 

In this enumeration of evils derived from insects, I must not wholly 
pass over the serious and sometimes fatal effects produced upon some per- 
sons by eating honey, or even by drinking mead. I once knew a lady 
upon whom these acted like poison, and have heard of instances in which 
death was the consequence. Sometimes, when bees extract their honey 
from poisonous plants, such results have not been confined to individuals 
of a particular habit or constitution. A remarkable proof of this is given 


1 Bonnet, v. 144. 2 Mém. Apterolog. 79. 3 Universal History, iv. 70. ed. 1779. 

4 For numerous cases of insects occasionally found in the human body, seea very valua- 
ble paper in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 257, by the Rev. F. W. Hope, F. R. S., in which the 
whole are brought together in a tabular form, so that the kind of insect, the local affection, 
and various other particulars, can be seen ata glance. Mr. Hope proposes to adopt the 
term Canthariasis for those diseases which originate with coleopterous insects, whether in 
the perfect or larva state ; that of Myasis for those caused by dipterous larve, while he re- 
stricts the form Scholechiasis to those resulting from lepidopterous larvee. Of the first (inclu- 
ding two cases arising from the earwig), he enumerates thirty-eight cases; of the second, 
sixty-four ; and of the third, seven. He suggests that the eggs of many of these larve 
have been introduced into the stomach with bread, butter, cheese, and even upon cooked 
food, upon which they have been deposited by the parent beetles or flies in our larders and 
cellars, &c.; others with ripe fruit or raw vegetables, as lettuces, watercresses, &c., and 
others again in impure and turbid water. 


112 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


by Dr. Barton in the fifth volume of The American Philosophical Trans- 
actions. In the autumn and winter of the year 1790 an extensive 
mortality was produced amongst those who had partaken of the honey 
collected in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. The attention of the 
American government was excited by the general distress, a minute inquiry 
into the cause of the mortality ensued, and it was satisfactorily ascertained 
that the honey had been chiefly extracted from the flowers of Kalmia 
latifolia. ‘Though the honey mentioned in Xenophon’s well-known 
account of the effect of a particular sort eaten by the Grecian soldiers 
during the celebrated retreat after the death of the younger Cyrus did not 
operate fatally, it gave those of the soldiers who ate it in small quantities 
the appearance of being intoxicated, and such as ‘partook of it freely, of 
being mad or about to die, numbers lying on the ground as if after a defeat. 
A specimen of this honey, which still retains its deleterious properties, was 
sent to the Zoological Society in 1834, from Trebizond on the Black Sea, 
by Keith E. Abbott, Esq. 

Amongst other direct injuries occasioned by these creatures, perhaps, 
out of regard for the ladies, ought to notice the alarm which many of 
them occasion to the loveliest part of the creation. When some females 
retire from society to avoid a wasp, others faint at the sight of a spider, 
and others, again, die with terror if they hear a, death-watch: these 
groundless apprehensions and superstitious alarms are as much real evils 
to those who feel them as if they were well founded. But having already 
adverted to this subject, I shall here only quote the observation of a wise 
man, that “ Fear is a betraying of the succors that reason offereth.”® 
The best remedy, therefore, in such cases, is going to reason for succor. 
In a few instances, indeed, the evil may take root in a constitutional de- 
fect, for there seems to be some foundation for the doctrine of natural 
antipathies: but, generally speaking, in consequence of the increased 
attention to Natural History, the reign of imaginary evils is ceasing amongst 
us, and what used to shake the stout hearts of our superstitious ancestors 
with anile terrors is become a subject of interesting inquiry to their better- 
informed descendants, even of the weaker sex. 

And now, my friend, I flatter myself you feel disposed to own the truth 
of my position, however it might startle you at first, and will candidly 
acknowledge that I have proved the empire of these despised insects over 
man’s person ; and that, instead of being a race of insignificant creatures, 
which we may safely overlook, as having no concern with, they may, in 
the hands of Divine Providence, and even of man, become to us fearful 
instruments of evil and of punishment. I shall next endeavor to give you 
some idea of the ¢ndirect injuries which they occasion us by attacking our 
property, or interfering with our pleasure or comfort—but this must be the 
subject of another letter. 


—— 


Iam, &c. 
1 Xenophon, Anabas. |. iv. Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. XXxXi. 
2 Wisd. xvii. 12. 


113 


* 
LETTER V. 


INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
INDIRECT INJURIES. 


Havine detailed to you the direct injuries which we suffer from insects, I 
am now to call your attention to their indirect attacks upon us, or the 
injury which they do our property ; and under this view also you will own, 
with the fullest conviction, that they are not beings that can with prudence 
or safety be disregarded or despised. Our property, at least that part 
exposed to the annoyance of these creatures, may be regarded as consist- 
ing of animal and vegetable productions, and that in two states; when 
they are living, namely, and after they are dead. I shall therefore en- 
deavor to give you a sketch of the mischief which they occasion, first to 
our living animal property, then to our living vegetable property ; and, 
lastly, to our dead stock, whether animal or vegetable. 

Next to our own persons, the animals which we employ in our business 
or pleasures, or fatten for food, individually considered, are the most valua- 
ble part of our possessions—and at certain seasons, hosts of insects of 
various kinds are incessant in their assaults upon most of them.—To begin 
with that noble animal the horse. See him, when turned out to his pas- 
ture, unable to touch a morsel of the food he has earned by his labors. 
He flies to the shade, evidently in great uneasiness, where he stands con- 
tinually stamping from the pain produced by the insertion of the weapons 
sheathed in the proboscis of a little fly (Stomoxys calcitrans) before no- 
ticed as attacking ourselves.! This alights upon him sometimes in one 
place and sometimes in another, and never lets him rest while the day 
lasts. See him again when in harness and traveling. He is bathed in 
blood flowing from innumerable wounds made by the knives and lancets 
of various horse-flies (Tabanus L.), which assail him as he goes, and 
allow him no respite®; and consider that even this is nothing to what he 
suffers in other climates from the same pest. In North America, vast 
clouds of different species—so abundant as to obscure every distant object, 
and so severe in their bite as to merit the appellation of burning flies— 
cover and torment the horses to such a degree as to excite compassion 
even in the hearts of the pack-horsemen. Some of them are nearly as 
big as humble-bees; and, when they pierce the skin and veins of the 
unhappy beast, make so large an orifice that, besides what they suck, the 
blood flows down its neck, sides, and shoulders in large drops like tears, 
till, to use Bartram’s expression, “ they are all ina gore of blood.” Both 
the dog-tick and the American tick before mentioned, especially the latter, 


1 See above, p. 94. 
* Once traveling through Cambridgeshire with a brother entomologist in a gig, our horse 
was in the condition here described, from the attack of Tabanus rusticus. 


10* 


114 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


also infest the horse. Kalm affirms, that he has seen the under parts of 
the belly, and other places of the body, so covered by them, that he 
could not introduce the point of a knife between them. They were 
deeply buried in the flesh; and in one instance that he witnessed, the 
miserable creature was so exhausted by continual suction, that it fell, and 
afterwards died in great agonies.' 

No quadruped is more infested by the gad-or bot-fly, sometimes also 
improperly called the breese?, than the horse. In this country no fewer 
than three species attack it. ‘The most common sort, known by the name 
of the horse-bee (Cstrus Equi), deposits its eggs (which being covered 
with a slimy substance adhere to the hairs) on such parts of the body as 
the animal can reach with its tongue; and thus, unconscious of what it is 
doing, it unwarily introduces into its own citadel the troops of its enemy. 
Another species ((£. hemorrhoidalis) is still more troublesome to it, ovi- 
positing upon the lips; and in its endeavors to effect this, from the 
excessive titillation it occasions, giving the poor beast the most distressing 
uneasiness. At the sight of this fly horses are always much agitated, 
tossing their heads about in the air to drive it away; and, if this does not 
answer, gallopping off to a distant part of their pasture, and, as their last 
resource, taking refuge in the water, where the gad-flies never follow 
them. We learn from Reaumur, that in France the grooms, when they 
observe any bots (which is the vulgar name for the larve and pupe of 
these flies) about the anus of a horse or in its dung, thrust their hand into 
the passage to search for more ; but this seems a useless precaution, which 
must occasion the animal great pain to answer no good end; for when the 
bots are passing through the body, having ceased feeding, they can do no 
further injury. In Sweden, as De Geer informs us, they act much more 
sensibly: those that have the care of horses are accustomed to clean their 
mouths and throats with a particular kind of brush, by which method they 
free them from these disagreeable inmates before they have got into the 
stomach, or can be at all prejudicial to them.? 

Providence has doubtless created these animals to answer some benefi- 
cial purpose; and Mr. Clark’s judicious conjectures are an index which 
points to the very kind of good our cattle may derive from them, as acting 
the part of perpetual stimuli or blisters: yet when they exceed certain 
limits, as is often the case with similar animals employed for purposes 
equally beneficial, they become certainly the causes of disease, and some- 
times of death. 

How troublesome and teasing is that cloud of flies (Anthomytd meteor- 
ica) which you must often have noticed in your summer rides hovering 
round the head and neck of your horse, accompanying him as he goes, 
and causing a perpetual tossing of the former !*—And still more annoying 
in Lapland, as we learn from Linné®, is the furious assault of the minute 
horse-gnat (Culer equinus L.), which infests these beasts in infinite num- 
bers, running under the mane and amongst the hair, and piercing the skin 
tosuck their blood.—An insect of the same genus is related to attack 


1 De Geer, vii. 158. 2 See Mr. W. S. MacLeay in Zinn. Trans. xiv. 355. 

3 De Geer, vi. 295. 4 Amen. Acad. iii. 358. 

5 Linn. Flor. Lapp. 376. Lach. Lapp. i. 233, 234. This insect from Linné’s descrip- 
tion is probably no Culex, but perhaps a Simulinm Latr. ( Simulia Meig.) 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 115 


them in a particular district in India in so tremendous a manner as to 
cause incurable cancers, which finally destroy them.'—But of all the 
insect tormentors of these useful creatures, there is none more trying to 
them than the forest-fly (Hippobosca equina). Attaching themselves to 
the parts least covered with hair, particularly under the belly between the 
hind legs, they irritate the quietest horse, and make him kick so as often 
to hazard the safety of his rider or driver. This singular animal runs 
sideways or backwards like a crab; and, being furnished with an unusual 
number of claws, it adheres so firmly that it is not easy to take it off; 
and even if you succeed in this, its substance is so hard, that by the 
utmost pressure of your finger and thumb it is difficult to kill it; and if 
you let it go with life, it will immediately return to the charge.—Amongst 
the insect plagues of horses, I should also have enumerated the larva of 
Lixus paraplecticus, which Linné considers as the cause of the equine 
disease called in Sweden, after the Phellandrium aquaticum, “ Stakra,” 
had not the observations of the accurate De Geer rendered it doubtful 
whether the insect be at all connected with this malady. 

Another quadruped contributing greatly to our domestic comfort, from 
which we derive a considerable portion of our animal food, and which, 
on account of its patient and laborious character when employed in agri- 
culture, is an excellent substitute for the horse, (you will directly perceive 
I am speaking of the ov, whether male or female,) is also not exempt 
from insect domination. At certain seasons the whole terrified herd, with 
their tails in the air, or turned upon their backs, or stiffly stretched out in 
the direction of the spine, gallop about their pastures, making the country 
re-echo with their lowings, and finding no rest till they get it into the water. 
Their appearance and motions are at this time so grotesque, clumsy, and 
seemingly unnatural, that we are tempted rather to laugh at the poor 
beasts than to pity them, though evidently in a situation of great terror 
and distress. ‘The cause of all this agitation and restlessness is a small 
gad- or bot-fly (G2. Bovis) less than the horse-bee, the object of which, 
though it be not to bite them, but merely to oviposit in their hides, is not 
put into execution without giving them considerable pain. 

When oxen are employed in agriculture, the attack of this fly is often 
attended with great danger, since they then become perfectly unmanage- 
able ; and, whether in harness or yoked to the plough, will run directly 
forward. At the season when it infests them, close attention should be 
paid, and their harness so constructed that they may easily be let loose. 

Reaumur has minutely described the ovipositor, or singular organ by 
which these insects are enabled to bore a round hole in the skin of the 
animal and deposit their eggs in the wound. ‘The anus of the female is 
furnished with a tube of a corneous substance, consisting of four pieces, 
which, like the pieces of a telescope, are retractile within each other. 
The last of these terminates in five points, three of which are longer than 
the others, and hooked: when united together they form an instrument 
very much like an auger or gimlet; only, having these points, it can bite 
with more effect.? He thinks the infliction of the wound is not attended 

1 Life of General Thomas, 186. 2 Linn, It. Scand. 182. De Geer, v. 227—230. 

’ Mr. Clark, however, is of opinion that the gad-fly does not pierce the skin of the 


animal, but only glues its eggs to it; the young larve when hatched burrowed into the 
flesh. Essay on the Bots of Horses and other Animals, p. 47. 


116 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


by much pain, except where very sensible nerves age injured, when the 
animal, appearing to be seized with a kind of frenzy, begins to gambol, 
and run with such swiftness that nothing can stop it. From this sem- 
blance of temporary madness in oxen when pursued and bored by the 
(Estrus, the Greeks applied the term to any sudden fit of fury or violent 
impulse in the human species calling such ebullitions an @strus. The 
female fly is observed to be very expeditious in oviposition, not more than 
a few seconds; and while she is performing the operation, the animal 
attempts to lash her off, as it does other flies, with its tail. The circular 
hole, made. by the auger just described, always continues open, and in- 
creases in diameter as the larva increases in size; thus enabling it to 
receive a sufficient supply of air by means of its anal respiratory plates, 
which are usually near the orifice.—But though these insects thus torment 
and terrify our cattle, they do them no material injury. Indeed they 
occasion considerable tumors under the skin, where the bots reside, vary- 
ing in number from three or four to thirty or forty ; but these seem unat- 
tended by any pain, and are so far from being injurious, that they are 
rather regarded as proofs of the goodness of the animal, since these flies 
only attack young and healthy subjects. ‘The tanners also prefer those 
hides that have the greatest number of bot-holes in them, which are always 
the best and strongest.’ 

The Stomoxys, and several of the other flies before enumerated, as well 
as the dog and American ticks, are as prejudicial to the ox as to the horse. 
One species of Hippobosca I have reason to believe is appropriated to 
them ; yet, since a single specimen only has hitherto been taken’, little 
can be said with respect to it.—A worse pest than any hitherto enume- 
rated is a minute fly, concerning the genus of which there is some doubt, 
Fabricius considering it as a Rhagio (R. columbaschensis) and Latreille 
as a Simulium?; but to whatever genus it may belong, it is certainly a 
most destructive little creature.’ In Servia and the Bannat it attacks the 
cattle in infinite numbers, penetrates, according to Fabricius, their gene- 
rative organs, but according to other accounts their nose and ears, and by 
its poisonous bite destroys them in the short space of four or five hours. 
Much injury was sustained in 1813 from this insect in the palatinate of 
Arad in Hungary and in the Bannat; in Banlack not fewer than two 
hundred horned cattle perishing from its attacks, and in Versetz, five 
hundred. It appears towards the latter end of April or beginning of 
May in such indescribable swarms as to resemble clouds, proceeding, as 
some think, from the region of Mehadia, but according to others from 
Turkey. Its approach is the signal for universal alarm. The cattle fly 
from their pastures ; and the herdsman hastens to shut up his cows in the 
house, or, when at a distance from home, to kindle fires, the smoke of 


1 Much of the information here collected is taken from Reaum. iv. Mem, 12.; and 
Clark in Linn. Trans. iii. 289. 

2 the writer of the present letter is possessor of this specimen, which he took on himself 
in a field where oxen were feeding. Pare V. Fig. 1. 

3 In the Systema Antliatorum (p. 56.) Fabricius most strangely considers this insect as 
synonymous with Culex reptans L., calling it Scatopse reptans, and dropping his former 
reference to Pallas, and account of its injurious properties. Meigen ( Dipt. i. 294.) makes 
this insect a Simulia, under the name of S. maculata. It is represented by Coquebert, 
whose figure is copied in the translation of K6llar’s work referred to above, and also in the 
next page. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 117 


which is found to drive off this terrible assailant. Of this the cattle are 
sensible, and as soon as attacked run towards the smoke, and are generally 
preserved by it.! 

Tabani in this country do not seem to annoy our oxen so much as they 
do our horses: perhaps for this immunity they may be indebted to the 
thickness of their hides; but Virgil’s beautiful description of the annoy- 
ance shows that the Grecian Cistrus, called by the Romans Asilus, evi- 
dently is one of the Tabanide. As the passage has not been very cor- 
rectly translated, I shall turn poet on the occasion, and attempt to give it 
you in a new dress. 


Through waving groves where Selo’s torrent flows, 
And where, Alborno, thy green Ilex grows, 
Myriads of insects flutter in the gloom, 

(Géstrus in Greece, Asilus named at Rome,) 
Fierce and of cruel hum. By the dire sound, 
Driven from the woods and shady glens around, 
The universal herds in terror fly ; 

Their lowings shake the woods and shake the sky, 
And Negro’s arid shore 


In some parts of Africa also insects of this tribe do incredible mischief. 
What would you think, should you be told that one species of fly drives 
both inhabitants and their cattle from a whole district? Yet the terrible 
Tsaltsalya or Zimb of Bruce (and the world seems now disposed to give 
more credit to the accounts of that traveler) has power to produce such 
an effect. This fly, which is a native of Abyssinia, both from its habits 
and the figure, appears to belong to the Tabanide, and perhaps is conge- 
nerous with the Mstrus of the Greeks.” 


1 Fabr. Ent. Syst. Em. iv. 276. 22. Latr. Hist. Nat. &c. xiv. 283. Leipz. Zeit. 
July 5, 1813, quoted in Germar’s Mag. der Ent. ii. 185. In Kollar’s Treatise on Insects in- 
jurious to Gardeners. Foresters, and Farmers, (Lond. 1840), a valuable work, for a trans- 
lation of which from the German into English we are indebted to the Misses Loudon, it is 
stated (p. 70.) that Dr. Schénbauer, late Professor of Natural History at Pesth, has ascer- 
tained that the swarms of this fly, which he calls Simulia Columbaschensis, instead of pro- 
ceeding, as the Wallachians universally believe, from the jaws of the dragon killed by St. 
George, and buried in certain caves in the limestone mountains near Columbaez in Servia, 
out of the mouths of which they issue like smoke, in fact are bred in the extensive swamps 
in this district, passing all their states of egg, larva, and nymphin water. Vast swarms 
appeared in 1830 in a large tract of Austria, Hungary, and Moravia, overflowed by the 
river Marsch, and hundreds of horses, cows, and swine perished from their bite. Men are 
equally attacked by this scourge, but can more easily defend themselves, and there are not 
wanting solitary examples of little children dying from the excessive inflammation conse- 
quent on their numerous punctures. 

2 It is by no means clear that the Gstrus of modern entomologists is synonymous with 
the insects which the Greeks distinguish by that name. Aristotle not only describes these 
as blood-suckers ( Hist. Animal. \. viii. c. 11.) but also as furnished with a strong proboscis 
(1. iv. c. 7.). He observes likewise that they are produced from an animal inhabiting the 
maters, in the vicinity of which they most abound (1. viii. c. 7.). And lian (Hist. 1. vi. 
ce. 38.) gives nearly the same account. Comparing the Géstrus with the Myops (synony- 
mous perhaps with Tabanus Latr., except that Aristotle affirms that its larve live in wood, 
I, v. c. 19.), he says, the CEstrus for a fly is one of the largest;.it has a stiff and large 
sting (meaning a proboscis,) and emits a certain humming and harsh sound—but the 
Myops is like the Cynomyia—it hums more loudly than the Gstrus, though it has a smaller 
sting. 

These characters and circumstances do not at all agree with the modern (Estrus, which, 
so far from being a blood-sucker furnished with a strong proboscis, has scarcely any mouth. 
It shuns also the vicinity of water, to which our cattle generally fly as a refuge from it. 
It seems more probable that the (Estrus of Greece was related to Bruce’s Zim, represented 
in his figure with a long proboscis, which makes its appearance in the neighborhood of 
rivers, and belongs to the Tabanide. For further information the reader should consult 
Mr. W. S. MacLeay’s learned paper on the insect called Oistros and Asilus by the ancients. 
Linn. Trans. xiv. 353. 


118 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


Small as this insect is, we must acknowledge the elephant, rhinoceros’, 
lion, and tiger, vastly his inferiors. ‘The appearance, nay the very sound 
of it, occasions more trepidation, movements, and disorder both in the 
human and brute creation, than whole herds of the most ferocious wild 
beasts, in tenfold greater numbers than they ever are would produce. As 
soon as this plague appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle for- 
sake their food, and run wildly about the plain till they die worn out with 
fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy remains for the residents on such 
spots but to leave the black earth and hasten down to the sands of Atbara, 
and there they remain while the rains last. Camels, and even elephants 
and rhinoceroses, though the two last coat themselves with an armor of 
mud, are attacked by this winged assassin, and afflicted with numerous 
tumors. All the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Melinda down to Cape 
Gardefui, to Saba and the south of the Red Sea, are obliged in the begin- 
ning of the rainy season to remove to the next sand to prevent all their 
stock of cattle from being destroyed. This is no partial emigration—the 
inhabitants of all the countries from the mountains of Abyssinia north- 
ward, to the confluence of the Nile and Astaboras, are once a year obliged 
to change their abode and seek protection in the sands of Beja; nor is 
there any alternative or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band 
were in the way capable of spoiling them of half their substance.* 
This fly is truly a Beelzebub?; and perhaps it was this, or some species 
related to it, that was the prototype of the Philistine idol worshipped 
under that name and in the form of a fly. 

I must not conclude this subject of insects hurtful to our cattle without 
noticing a beetle much talked of by the ancients for its mischievous pro- 
perties in this respect. You will soon and rightly conjecture that 1 am 
speaking of the Buprestis*, so called from the injury which it has been 
supposed to occasion to oxen or kine. 

Modern writers have been much divided in their opinion to what genus 
this celebrated insect belongs. All indeed have regarded it as of the 
Coleoptera order ; but here their agreement ceases. Linné should seem 
to have looked upon it as a species of the genus to which he has given 
its name ; but these, being timber insects, are not very likely to be swal- 
lowed by cattle with their food. Geoffroy thinks it to be a Carabus or 
Cicindela, but with as little reason, since the species of these genera do 
not feed amongst the herbage ; and though they are sometimes found run- 
ning there, yet their motions are so rapid, that it is not very likely that 
cattle would often swallow them while feeding. 

M. Latreille, in an ingenious essay on this insect®, suspects it to belong 
to the genus Melée, and as this feeds upon herbs, (M. Prosearabeus and 
M. violaceus, upon the Ranunculi, so widely disseminated in our pastures,) 
his opinion seems to rest upon more solid grounds than that of his prede- 


1 The larve of a species of G2strus which infests the rhinoceros is figured in the Trans. 
Ent. Soc. of London, vol. ii. pl. 22. fig. 1. 

2 Bruce’s Travels, 8vo, ii, 315. 

3 Heb. 3555 52, literally “ Lord-Fly.” See 2 Kings, i. 2.; and Bochart. Hierozoic. ps. 
ii. 1. 4. c. 9. p. 490. 

4 Burn-Cow or Ox, from Bovs bos, and zpnfw inflammo. M. Latreille translates it Créve- 
beuf, but improperly. 

5 Annales du Muséum.—Xe Ann. No xi. p. 129. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 119 


cessors ; but yet I think the insect in question rather belongs to Mylabris, 
and for the following reason. 

In order rightly to ascertain what insect this really was, we must en- 
deavor to trace it in the country in which it received its name and charac- 
ter. This country was certainly Greece; and there such an animal, 
retaining nearly its old name, and accused of being the cause of the same 
injury to cattle, still exists. For Belon informs us, that on Mount Athos 
there is found 4 winged insect like the blister-beetle, but yellow, larger, 
and of a very offensive smell, which feeds upon various plants, and is 
called Voupristt by the caloyers or monks, who assert that when horses 
or other cattle even feed upon the herbs which the animals have touched 
they die from inflammation, and that it is an immediate poison to oxen.! 
This, therefore, most probably was the Buprestis of the Greek writers ; 
and as Pliny usually compiled from them, it may be regarded as his also, 
which he tells us was a caustic insect, and prepared in the same manner 
as the blister-beetle.* He further observes that it was scarce in Italy. 
The Greek insect of Mount Athos M. Latreille supposes to be a Mylabris, 
and in this I agree with him ; and, therefore, this is the proper genus to 
which the original Greek Buprestis, the true type of the insect in question, 
ought to be referred, and not Meldée. 

Whether this animal be really guilty to the extent of which it is accused, 
admits of considerable doubt ; but as I have not the means of ascertain- 
ing this, I shall leave the question for others who are better informed to 
decide. 

But of all our cattle none are more valuable and important to us than 
our flocks ; to them we look not only fora principal part of our food, 
but also for clothing and even light. Thick as is their coat of wool, it 
does not shield them from the attack of all-subduing insects: on the con- 
trary, it affords a comfortable shelter to one of their enemies of this class, 
regarded by Linné as a species of Hippobosca ,but properly separated from 
that genus by Latreille under the name of Melophagus.? This is com- 
monly called the sheep-louse, and is so tenacious of life, that we are told 
by Ray it will exist in a fleece twelve months after it is shorn, and its 
excrements are said to give a green tinge to the wool very difficult to be 
discharged.—You have doubtless often observed in the heat of the day 
the sheep shaking their heads and striking the ground violently with their 
fore feet ; or running away and getting into ruts, dry dusty spots or gravel 
pits, where crowding together they hold their noses close to the ground. 
The object of all these actions and movements is to keep the gad-fly 
appropriated to them (G2. Ovis) from getting at their nostrils, on the inner 
margin of which they lay their eggs, from whence the maggots make their 
way into the head, feeding in the maxillary and frontal sinuses on the mu- 
cilage there produced. When full-grown, they fall through the nostrils to 
the ground, and assume the pupa. Whether the animal suffers much pain 
from these troublesome assailants is not ascertained. Sometimes the mag- 
gots make their way even intothe brain. I have been informed by a very 
accurate and intelligent friend, that, on opening the head of one of his 


} Observations de plusieurs Singularités, &c, 1. i. c. 45. p. 73. of the edition in Sir Joseph 
Bank’s library. 
? Hist. Nat. 1. xxix. c. 4. 3 See Curtis, Brit. Ent. t. 142. 


120 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS 


sheep which died in consequence of a vertigo, three, maggots were found 
in it in a line just above the eyes, and that behind them there was a blad- 
der of water.—Perhaps you are not aware that the bots we are speaking 
of, or rather those in the head of goats, have been prescribed as a remedy 
for the epilepsy, and that from the tripod of Delphos. Yet so we are told, 
on the authority of Alexander Trallien. Whether Democrates, who con- 
sulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy does not appear ; the story 
shows however that the ancients were aware of the station of these 
larve.—The common saying that a whimsical person is maggoty, or has 
got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the freaks the sheep have 
been observed to exhibit when infested by their bots.—The flesh-fly is 
also a great annoyance to the fleecy tribe, especially in fenny countries ; 
and if constant attention be not paid them, they are soon devoured by its 
insatiable larve. In Lincolnshire, a principal profit of the druggists is 
derived from the sale of a mercurial ointment used to destroy them.—In 
tropical countries the sheep frequently suffer from the ants. Bosman relates 
that when in Guinea, if one of his was attacked by them in the night, 
which often happened, it was jnvariably destroyed, and was so expediously 
devoured that in the morning only the skeleton would be left.. 

Of our domestic animals the least infested by insects, I mean as to the 
number of species that attack it, is the swine. With the exception of its 
louse, which seems to annoy it principally by exciting a violent itching, it 
is exposed to scarcely any other plague of this class, unless we may sup- 
pose that it is the biting of flies, which in hot weather drives it to “ its 
wallowing in the mire.” 

Under this head we may include the deer tribe, for, though often wild, 
those kept in parks may strictly be deemed domestic ; and the rein-deer is 
quite as much so to the Laplander as our oxen and kine are tous. We learn 
from Reaumur that the fallow-deer is subject to the attack of two species 
of gad-fly!: one which, like that of the ox, deposits its eggs in an orifice 
it makes in the skin of the animal, and so produces tumors ; and another, 
in imitation of that of the sheep, ovipositing in such a manner that its 
larve when hatched can make their way into the head, where they take 
their station, in a cavity near the pharynx. He relates a curious notion 
of the hunters with respect to these two species. Conceiving them both 
to be the same, they imagine that they mine for themselves a painful path 
under the skin to the root of the horns; which is their common rendezvous 
from all parts of the body ; where, by uniting their labors and gnawing 
indefatigably, they occasion the annual casting of these ornamental as well 
as powerful arms. This fable, improbable and ridiculous as it is, has had 
the sanction of grave authorities.»—The (&stri last mentioned inhabit, in 
considerable numbers, two fleshy bags as big as a hen’s egg, and of a sim- 
ilar shape, near the root of the tongue. Reaumur took between sixty and 
seventy bots from one of them, and even then some had escaped. 
What other purpose these two remarkable purses are intended to answer, 
it is not easy to conjecture. He supposes that the parent fly must enter 
the nostrils of the deer, and pass down the air passages to oviposit in them : 


1 Mr. Curtis ( Brit. Ent. t. 106.) under the name of Gstrus pictus has figured a fine species 
of gad-fly taken in the New Forest, which he conjectures may be bred from the deer. It 
may probably be one of the species here alluded to. 

® Reaum. v.69. Dictionnaire de Trevoux, article Cerf. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 121 


but probably such a manceuvre is unnecessary, since there seems no rea- 
son, supposing the eggs to be laid in the nostrils, why the larva when 
hatched cannot itself make its way down to the above station, as easily 
as that of the sheep into the maxillary sinuses. Or, which perhaps is more 
likely ,when the animal draws in the air, the eggs or larve may be carried 
down with it, in both cases, to the place assigned to them by Providencé.! 

No animal, however, is so cruelly tormented by (Cstri as the rein-deer ; 
for besides one synonymous apparently with this of the deer (CZ. nasalis), 
from which they endeavor to relieve themselves by snorting and blow- 
ing’, they have a second which produces bots under their skin; not 
improbably the same species that in a similar way attacks the latter, as I 
have stated above. We have heard that the vaccine disease is derived 
from the cow and the horse, and the small-pox is said to have originated 
in the heels of the camel: but neither the ingenious Dr. Jenner nor any 
other writer on this subject has informed us that the rein-deer is subject 
to the distemper last named; yet Linné quotes the learned work of a 
Swedish physician on Syphilis, who gravely gives this as a fact!!3 The 
inoculator, in truth, is the gad-fly, the tumors it causes are the pustules, 
and its larva are the pus.—It is astonishing how dreadfully these poor 
animals in hot weather are terrified and injured by them: ten of these 
flies will put a herd of five hundred into the greatest agitation. They 
cannot stand still a minute, no not a moment, without changing their pos- 
ture, puffing and blowing, sneezing and snorting, stamping and tossing 
continually ; every individual trembling and pushing its neighbor about. 
The ovipositor of this fly is similar to that of the ox-breese, consisting of 
several tubular joints which slip into each other; and therefore Linné was 
probably mistaken in supposing that it lays its eggs upon the skin of the 
animal, and that the bot, when it appears, eats its way through it*: there 
can be little doubt (or else what is the use of such an apparatus ?) that it 
bores a hole in the skin and there deposits the eggs. About the begin- 
ning of July the rein-deer sheds its hair, which then stands erect—at this 
time the fly is always fluttering about it, and takes its opportunity to ovi- 
posit. The bots remain under the skin through the whole winter, and 
grow to the size of an acorn. Six or eight of these are often to be found 
in a single rein-deer that has seen only one winter; and these so emaciate 
them, that frequently one third of their number perish in consequence. 
Even those that are full-grown suffer greatly from this insect. The fly 
follows the animals over .precipices, valleys, the snow-covered mountains, 
and even the highest alps; to which, in order to avoid it, they often fly 
with great swiftness in a direction contrary to the wind. By this constant 
agitation and endeavor to escape from the attack of their enemy they are 
kept from eating during the day, standing always upon the watch, with erect 
ears and attentive eyes, that they may observe whether it comes near 
them.° The rein-deer are teased also by a pecular species of Tabanus 


1 For the account of the C&strus, of the deer, see Reaum. v. 67—77. 

* Linn. Lach. Lapp. ii. 45. In the passage here referred to, Linné speaks of two species 
of G&strus, though the mode of expression indicates that he considered them as the same. 
One was CE. nasalis, from which they freed themselves by snorting, &c., the other C. 
Tarandi which formed the pustules in their backs. In Syst. Nat. 969. 3. he strangely ob- 
serves under the former species, “‘ Habitat in equorum fauce, per nares intrans! ” confound- 
ing probably CE. veterinus of Mr. Clark with the true CL, nasalis. 

3 Lach. Lapp. i. 280. * Flor. Lapp. 79. 5 Linn. Flor. Lapp. 379. 


11 


122 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


(T. tarandinus), which, by a singular instinct, instead of their skin, makes 
its incision in their horns when tender. 

Our dogs, the faithful guardians of our other domestic animals and 
possessions, the attached companions of our walks, and instruments of 
many of our pleasures and amusements, cannot defend themselves from 
insect annoyance. ‘They have their peculiar louse, and the flea sucks 
their blood in common with that of their master: you must also often have 
noticed how much they suffer from the dog-tick, which, when once it has 
fixed itself in their flesh, will in a short time, from the size of a pin’s 
head, so swell itself out by gorging their blood that it will equal in dimen- 
sions what is called the tick-bean. In the West Indies these ticks, or one 
like them, get into the ears and head of the dogs, and so annoy them and 
wear them out that they either die or are obliged to be killed. 

Some of the most esteemed dainties of our tables are supplied from such 
of the winged part of the creation as we have domesticated. These also 
have a louse (Nirmus) appropriated to them, and the gorgeous peacock is 
infested by one of extraordinary dimensions and singular form.” Pigeons, 
in addition, often swarm with the bed-bug, which makes it advisable never 
to have their lockers fixed to a dwelling-house. In their young, if your 
curiosity urges you to examine them, you may find the larva of the flea, 
which in its perfect state often swarms in poultry. 

Amongst our most valuable domestic animals I shall be very unjust 
and ungrateful if I do not enumerate those industrious little creatures the 
bees, from whose incessant labors and heaven-taught art we derive the 
two precious productions of honey and wax. ‘They also are infested by 
numerous insect-enemies, some of which attack the bees themselves, while 
others despoil them of their treasures.—They have parasites of a peculiar - 
genus (if indeed they are not the young larve of Meloe), although at 
present regarded as belonging to Pediculus®, and mites (Gamasus gymnop- 
terorum) are frequently injurious to them. In Germany the bee-louse 
(Braula ceca Nitsch), which is about the size of a flea and allied to the 
Hippobosce, often infests populous hives so as greatly to annoy the bees 
by fixing itself upon them (sometimes two, three, or more on a single bee), 
and making them restless and indisposed to their usual labors. That 
universal plunderer the wasp, and his formidable congener the hornet, 
often seize and devour them, sometimes ripping open their body to come 
at the honey, and at others carrying off that part in which it is situated. 
The former frequently takes possession of a hive, having either destroyed 
or driven away its inhabitants, and consumes all the honey it contains. 
Nay there *are certain idlers of their own species, called by apiarists, 


1 Mr. Kittoe. 2 Piate V. Fig. 3. 

3 Melittophagus Mus. Kirby. See Mon. Ap. Angl. ii. 168. (Triungulinus Doufour.) I 
copy the following memorandum respecting M. melitte from my common-place book, May 
7, 1812. On the flowers of Ficaria, Taraxacum, and Bellis, I found a great number of this 
insect, which seemed extremely restless, running here and there over the flowers, and over 
each other, with great swiftness, mounting the anthers, and sometimes lifting themselves 
up above them, as if looking for something. One or two of them leaped upon my hand. 
Near one of these flowers I found a small Andrena or Halictus, upon which some of these 
creatures were busy sucking the poor animal, so that it seemed unable to ly away. When 
disclosed from the egg, I imagine they get on the top of these flowers toattach themselves 
to any _ Andrenide@ that may alight on them, or come sufficiently near for them to leap 
on it.—K. 


4 KOllar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 73. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 123 


corsair-bees, which plunder the hives of the industrious.—From the 
curious account which Latreille has given us of Philanthus apivorus, a 
wasplike insect, it appears that great havoc is made by it of the unsuspect- 
ing workers, which it seizes while intent upon their daily labors, and car- 
ries off to feed its young. Another insect, which one would not have 
suspected of marauding propensities, must here be introduced. Kuhn 
informs us, that long ago (in 1799) some monks who kept bees, observ- 
ing that they made an unusual noise, lifted up the hive, when an animal 
flew out, which, to their great surprise no doubt, for they at first took it 
for a bat, proved to be the death’s head hawk-moth (Acherontia atropos), 
already celebrated as the innocent cause of alarm; and he remembers 
that several, some years before, had been found dead in the bee-houses.? 
M. Huber, also, in 1804, discovered that it had made its way into his 
hives and those of his vicinity, and had robbed them of their honey. In 
Africa, we are told, it has the same propensity; which the Hottentots 
observing, in order to monopolize the honey of the wild bees, have per- 
suaded the colonists that it inflicts a mortal wound. This moth has the 
faculty of emitting a remarkable sound, which he supposes may produce 
an effect upon the bees of a hive somewhat similar to that caused by the 
voice of their queen, which as soon as uttered strikes them motionless, 
and thus it may be enabled to commit with impunity such devastation in 
the midst of myriads of armed bands.4 The larve of two species of 
moth (Galleria cereana, and Mellonella) exhibit equal hardihood with 
equal impunity. They, indeed, pass the whole of their initiatory state in 
the midst of the combs. Yet in spite of the stings of the bees of a whole 
republit, they continue their depredations unmolested, sheltering themselves 
in tubes made of grains of wax, and lined with silken tapestry, spun 
and wove by themselves, which the bees (however disposed they may be 
to revenge the mischief which they do them by devouring what to all 
other animals would be indigestible, their wax) are unable to penetrate. 
These larve are sometimes so numerous in a hive, and commit such exten- 
sive ravages, as to force the poor bees to desert it and seek another habi- 
tation. 

I shall not delay you longer upon this subject by detailing what wild 
animals suffer from insects, further than by observing that the two crea- 
tures of this description in which we are rather interested, the hare and 
the rabbit, do not escape their attack. The hare in Lapland is more tor- 

, mented by the gnats than any other quadruped. To avoid this pest it is 
obliged to leave the cover of the woods in full day, and seek the plains: 
hence the hunters say, that of three litters which a hare produces in a 
year, the first dies by the cold, the second by gnats, and only the third 
escapes and comes to maturity.°—We learn from the ingenious Mr. Clark, 
that the American rabbit and hare are infested by the largest species of 
CEstrus® yet discovered ; and our domestic rabbits sometimes swarm with 
the bed-bug. This was the case with some kept by two young gentle- 


1 Latreille, Hist. des Fourmis, 307—320. 2 Naturforscher, Stk. xvi. 74. 
3 Quoted from Campbell’s Travels in South Africa, in the Quarterly Review for July, 
1815, 315. 4 Huber, Pref. xi—xiii. 5 De Geer, ii. 83. 


6 Considered by Mr. Clark as a new genus, which he has named Cuterebra, and ot which 
he has described three species.— Essay on the Bots of Horses, &c. p. 63. t. 2. f. 24—29. 


124 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


men at my house last summer to such a degree, thatyI found it necessary 
to have them killed. 

Nor are the inhabitants of the waters sheltered by their peculiar ele- 
ment from these universal assailants. ‘The larve of Dytisci, fixing them- 
selves by their suctorious mandibles to the body of fish, doubtless destroy 
an infinite number of the young fry of our ponds. Some species of sal- 
mon (Salmo fario L.) are the food of an animal which Linné has arranged 
under Pediculus ; and probably many others of the finny tribes may, like 
the birds, have their peculiar parasites. Even shell-fish do not escape, 
for the Nymphon grossipes enters the shell of the muscle and devours its 
inhabitant. 

Tam, &c. 


125 


LETTER VI. 
INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


INDIRECT INJURIES.—continued. 


Havine endeavored to give you some idea of the mode in which insects 
establish and maintain their empire over man and his train of dependent 
animals, [ shall next call your attention to his living vegetable possessions, 
whether the produce of the forest, the field, or the garden; whether 
necessary to him for his support, convenient for his use, or ministering to 
his comfort, pleasure, and delight:—and here you will find these little 
creatures as busily engaged in the work of mischief as ever, destroying 
what is necessary, deranging what is convenient, marring what is beautiful, 
and turning what should give us pleasure into an object of disgust. 

Let us begin with the produce of our jfields——Bread is called “the 
staff of life:”’ yet should Divine Providence in anger be pleased to give 
the rein to the various insects which, in the different stages of its growth, 
attack the plant producing it, how quickly would this staff be broken ! 
From the moment that wheat begins to emerge from the soil, to the time 
when it is carried into the barn, it is exposed to their ravages. One of its 
earliest assailants in this country is that of which Mr. Walford has given 
an account in the Linnean Transactions, taking it for the fire-worm ; but, 
as Mr. Marsham observed, not correctly, it being probably the larva of 
some coleopterous insect, perhaps of one of the numerous tribe of Bra- 
chyptera or rove-beetles which are not universally carnivorous. This 
animal was discovered to infest the wheat in its earliest stage of growth 
after vegetation had commenced ; and there was reason to believe that it 
began even with the grain itself. It éats into the young plant about an 
inch below the surface, devouring the central part; and thus, vegetation 
being stopped, it dies. Out of fifty acres sown with this grain in 1802, 
ten had been destroyed by the grub in question so early as October.1— 
Other predaceous Coleoptera will also attack young corn. ‘This is done 
by the larva of Zabrus gibbus, both with respect to wheat and barley. 
In the spring of 1813 not less than twelve German hides (Hufen), equal 
to two hundred and thirty English acres, of wheat, were destroyed by it 
in the canton of Seeburg, near Halle in Germany ; and Germar (who with 
other members of the Society of Natural History, at that place, ascer- 
tained the fact,) suspects that it was the same insect described by Cooti, 
an Italian author, which caused great destruction in Upper Italy in 1776. 
Not only is the larva, which probably lives in that state three years, thus 
injurious, but, what one would not have expected, the perfect beetle itself 
attacks the grain, both of wheat and barley, when in the ear, clambering 


1 Linn. Trans. ix. 156—161. 
11* 


126 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


up the stems at night in vast numbers to get at it. The Rev. G. T. 
Rudd, when residing at Kimpton near Andover, Hants, where this insect 
abounds, not only saw it, as did his brother, gnaw off the tip of the husk 
from the end of a grain of barley, and then gradually draw the milky 
grain out of its sheath, consuming it as it came forth, till the whole grain 
had disappeared, and repeating the operation till seven or eight grains had 
been eaten, but was fully satisfied, on killing and dissecting it, that it had 
fed on the juicy immature grain.! Along with the larve of this insect 
were found, in the proportion of about one fourth, those of another beetle 
(Melolontha ruficornis), which seemed -to contribute to the mischief.? 
Other beetles, generally supposed to be carnivorous, as Amara communis, 
trivialis, &c., are also stated by M. Zimmermann to feed on wheat.? 

The caterpillars of a moth (Agrotis segetum) occasionally devastate 
large tracts of wheat and rye by eating the roots, stem, and leaves, in 
Northern Germany, Prussia, Poland, and Russia*; but this species with 
us is chiefly injurious to turnips, and garden vegetables. 

Mr. Markwick has given us the history of a fly that attacks wheat in a 
Jater period of its growth, which, if it be not indeed the satne, appears 
to be nearly related to the Musca pumilionis of Bierkander® ( Oscinis F.), 
accused by him of being extremely injurious to rye in the spring. Our 
insect was discovered on the first-sown wheats early in that season, making 
its lodgment in the very heart of the principal stem just above the root, 
which stem it invariably destroyed, giving the crop at first a most unpro- 
mising appearance, so that there seemed scarcely a hope of any produce. 
But it proved in this and other instances that year (1791) that the plant, 
instead of being injured, derived great benefit from this circumstance ; 
for, the main stem perishing, the root (which was not hurt) threw out 
fresh shoots on every side, so as to yield a more abundant crop than in 
other fields where the insect had not been busy. These flies, therefore, 
seem to belong to our insect benefactors; and I should not have intro- 
duced them here, had it not been probable that in some instances later 
in the spring they may attack the lateral shoots of the wheat, and so be 
injurious. It is also not unlikely that the new progeny, which is disclosed 
in May, may oviposit in barley or some other spring corn, which would 
bring the next generation out in time for the wheat sown in the autumn. 
These flies are amongst the last, and, in some seasons, the most numerous, 
that take shelter in the windows of our apartments when the first frosts 
indicate the approach of winter, previous to their becoming torpid during 
that season. When this little animal was first observed in England, it 
created no small alarm amongst agriculturists, lest it should prove to be 
the Hessian fly, so notorious for its depredations in North America ; but 
Mr. Marsham, by tracing out the species, proved the alarm to be unfound- 


! Ent. Mag. ii. 182. 

2 Germar’s Mag. der Ent. i. 1—10. Mr. Stephens, in his Illustrations of British Ento- 
mology (No. I. p. 4.) very judiciously asks, ‘May not these herbivorous larve have been 
the principal cause of the mischief to the wheat, while those of the Zabrus contributed 
rather to lessen their numbers than to destroy the corn?’’ But this query does not account 
for their being found, when in the perfect state, attacking the ear. I have seen cognate 
beetles devouring the seeds of umbelliferous plants. 

3 Silbermann, Rev. Ent. ii. 201. 

4 Kllar on Ins. injurious to Gardeners, &c. 94—101. 

§ Act. Stockh. 1778, 3.n. 11. and 4.n.4. Marsham in Linn, Trans. ii. 79. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 127 


ed. That there was sufficient cause for apprehension, should it have so 
turned out, what I have formerly stated concerning the later insect, and 
the additional facts which I shall now adduce, will amply show. 

The ravages of the animal just alluded to, which was first noticed in 
1776, and received its name from an erroneous idea that it was carried 
by the Hessian troops in their straw from Germany, were at one time so 
universal as to threaten, where it appeared, the total abolition of the cul- 
ture of wheat; though the injury which it now occasions is much less than 
at first. It commences its depredations in autumn, as soon as the plant 
begins to appear above ground, when it devours the leaf and stem with 
equal voracity until stopped by the frost. When the return of spring 
brings a milder temperature the fly appears again, and deposits its eggs in 
the heart of the main stems, which it perforates, and so weakens, that 
when the ear begins to grow heavy, and is about to go into the milky 
state, they break down and perish. All the crops, as far as it extended 
its flight, fell before this ravager. It first showed itself in Long Island, 
from whence it proceeded inland at about the rate of fifteen or twenty 
miles annually, and by the year 1789 had reached 200 miles from its 
original station. I must observe, however, that some accounts state its 
progress at first to have been very slow, at the rate only of seven miles 
per annum, and the damage inconsiderable ; and that the wheat crops 
were not materially injured by it before the year 1788. Though these 
insect hordes traverse such a tract of country in the course of the year, 
their flights are not more than five or six feet at atime. Nothing inter- 
cepts them in their destructive career, neither mountains nor the broadest 
rivers. ‘They were seen to cross the Delaware like a cloud. The num- 
bers of this fly were so great, that in wheat-harvest the houses swarmed 
with them, to the extreme annoyance of the inhabitants. They filled 
every plate or vessel that was in use; and five hundred were counted 
in a single glass tumbler exposed to them a few minutes with a little beer 
in it.” 

America suffers also in its wheat and maize from the attack of an insect 
of a different order; which, for what reason I know not, is called the 
chintz bug-fly. It appears to be apterous, and is said in scent and color 
to resemble the bed-bug. They travel in immense columns from field to 
field, like locusts, destroying every thing as ik proceed ; but their in- 
juries are confined to the states south of the 40th degree of north latitude.® 
From this account the depredator here noticed should belong to the tribe 


1 Linn. Trans. ii. 76—80. 

2 Encycloped. Britann. viii. 489—495. Though the ravages of the Hessian fly in the 
United States have not been so extensive of late, much injury is still occasionally suffered 
from it, as stated by Mr. Say, who described it under the name of Cecidomyia destructor, 
and as I learn from E. C. Herrick, Esq. of New Haven, Connecticut, who has taken great 
pains to ascertain the metamorphosis and economy of this insect; and either this or an 
allied species described by M. KGllar, destroyed a large proportion of the wheat crops in 
Hungary in 1833, and extended itself also to France. Dr. Hammerschmidt, who has also 
given an account of this insect, has called it Cecidomyia tritici, supposing it to be the same 
with the insect described by Mr. Marsham and Mr. Kirby; but as the mischief done by 
the larva of the former is caused by its eating into the stem and weakening the whole plant, 
while the latter is injurious by destroying the pollen of the blossom, the two inseets are 
evidently very distinct, as indeed their different color proves.—K@6llar on Ins. injurious to 
Gardeners, &c. 118. 

3 Young’s Annals of Agriculture, xi. 471. 


128 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


of Geocorise Latr.; but it seems very difficult to copceive how an insect 
that lives by suction, and has no mandibles, could destroy these plants so 
totally. ‘ 

When the wheat blossoms, another marauder, to which Mr. Marsham 
first called the attention of the public, takes its turn to make an attack 
upon it, under the form of an orange-colored gnat, which introducing its 
long retractile ovipositor into the centre of the corolla, there deposits its 
eggs. These being hatched, the larve, perhaps by eating the pollen, 
prevert the impregnation of the grain, and thus in some seasons destroy 
the twentieth part of the crop. 

Much mischief is also sometimes done by a species of Thrips (T. cere- 
atina Haliday), a minute insect, often abundant on flowers, which, insinu- 
ating itself between the internal valve of the corolla and the grain, inserts 
*ts rostrum into this last, and causes it to shrivel?; and according to Vas- 
sali Eandi’, as quoted by Mr. Haliday, the same species also attacks the 
stem at a still earlier period, causing the abortion of the ears, and some- 
times to such an extent that in 1805 (in which year the wheat in Eng- 
land, also, suffered apparently from this cause) one third of the wheat 
crop on the richest plains of Piedmont was destroyed by this seemingly 
insignificant little insect.4 

One would think, when laid up in the barn or in the granary, that wheat 
would be secure from injury ; but even there the weevil (Caladra grana- 
ria), in its imago as well as in its larva state, devours it; and sometimes 
this pest becomes so infinitely numerous, that a sensible man, engaged in 
the brewing trade, once told me, speaking perhaps rather hyperbolically, 
that they collected and destroyed them by bushels: and no wonder, for 
a single pair of these destroyers may produce in one year above 6000 
descendants. ‘There are three other insects that attack the stored wheat, 
which are more injurious to it than even the weevil. One is a minute 
species of moth (T%nea granella L.), of which Leeuwenhoek has given 
us a full history under the name of the wolf. Another is a species of the 
same genus, at present not named, which, as we are informed by Du 
Hamel, at one time committed dreadful ravages in the province of Angou- 
mois in France. The third is Trogosita caraboides, a kind of beetle, 
the grub of which, called Cadelle, Olivier tells us did more damage to the 
housed grain in the southern provinces of France than either the weevil 
or the wolf.® . 

In this place, too, must be noticed the caterpillars of a moth (Cara- 
drina cubicularis), which Mr. Raddon told me were found in such quan- 
tities in a wheat-stack near Bristol, when taken down to be thrashed, that 
he could have gathered them up by handfuls, and they had done much 
injury to the grain.® 

Here I may just mention a few other insects which devour grains that 
are the food of man, concerning which I have collected no other facts. 
The rice-weevil (Calandra oryze) is very injurious to the useful grain 
after which it is named ; as is likewise another small beetle, Lyctus den- 

1 Tipula tritici K., belonging to Latreille’s genus Cecidomyia.—Marsham and Kirby in 
Linn. Trans. iii. 242—245. iv. 225—239. v. 96—110. 

* Kirby in Linn, Trans. iii. 242. 3 Mem, Acad. Turin, xvi. lxxvi. 


4 Haliday in Entom. Mag. v. 444. 5 Oliv. ii. n. 19, 3, 4. 
6 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. xlii. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 129 


tatus F. (Sylvanus Latr.); and an Indian grain, called in the country 
Joharre; which appears to be a species of Holcus or Milium, is the ap- 
propriate food of another species of Calandra’, which I found abundant 
in it. 

Rye, in this island, is an article of less importance than wheat ; but in 
some parts of the Continent it forms a principal portion of the bread-corn. 
Providence has also appointed the insect means of causing a scarcity of 
this species of food. ‘The fly before noticed (Oscinis pumillionis) in- 
troduces its eggs into the heart of the shoots of rye, and occasions so 
many to perish, that from eight to fourteen are lost in a square of two 
feet. This fly, in 1839, did much damage to the rye at Grignon, in 
France’, and in 1841 to that near Kingston, Surrey.* A small moth, also 
(Margaritia secalis), which eats the culm of this plant within the vagina, 
thus destroys many ears. In common with wheat and barley, it also 
suffers from Leeuwenhoek’s wolf and the weevil, when stored in granaries. 

Barley likewise, another of our most valuable grains, has several insect 
foes, besides the beetle (Zabrus gibbus), already alluded to (p. 125.). 
The gelatinous larva of a saw-fly (Tenthredo L.) preys upon the upper 
surface of the leaves, and so occasions them to wither. Musca hordet of 
Bierkander also assails the plant. A tenth part of the produce of this 
grain, Linné affirms, is annually destroyed in Sweden by another fly, not 
yet discovered in Britain (Oscinis frit), which does the mischief by get- 
ting into the ear; as does likewise O. lineata F. Dr. J. N. Sauter has 
described a fly which he calls Tipula cerealis (most probably a species of 
Cecidomyia), the larve of which, eating the stem of barley and spelt 
(a kind of dwarf wheat), did great injury to these crops in the grand 
duchy of Baden in 1813 and 1816; and the same, or an allied species, 
is supposed to have formerly destroyed the oats in Styria and Carinthia.® 
A small species of moth described by Reaumur, though not named by 
-Linné, which may be called Tinea hordet (Ypsolophus grannellus?), 
devous the grain when laid up in the granary. This fly deposits several 
eggs, perhaps twenty or thirty, on a single grain; but as one grain only is 
to be the portion of one larva, they disperse when hatched, each select- 
ing one for itself, which it enters from without at a place more tender than 
the rest; and this single grain furnishes a sufficient supply of food to 
support the caterpillar till it is ready to assume the pupa. Concealed 
within this contracted habitation, the little animal does nothing that may 
betray it to the watchful eye of man, not even ejecting its excrements from 
_ its habitation ; so that there may be millions within a heap of corn, where 
you would not suspect there was one.® 


1 Curculio testaceus, Ent. Brit. 

? Marsham in Linn, Trans. ii. 80. De Geer notices the injury done by this fly to rye, 
and observes that before it had been attributed to frost. ii. 68. 

3 Ann. Ent. Soc. de France, viii. p. xiii. 

“ Proceed. of Ent. Soc. Lond. Oct. 5, 1840. 

5 KGllar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 124. 

§ Act. Stockh. 1750. 128. Reaum. ii. 480, &c. Barley, like wheat, and indeed all 
white corn, is much injured in the granaries of the corn-dealer by the larve of the little 
moth (Tinea granella L.) the wolf of Leeuwenhoek before referred to. On visiting those 
of Messrs. Hellicar, Bristol, in October, 1837, with my friend W. Raddon, Esq., we found 
the barley lying on the floors covered with a gauze-like tissue formed of the fine silken 
threads spun by the larvx in traversing its surface, on recently quitting it for the purpose 
of undergoing their metamorphosis in the ceiling of the granary, formed of the joists and 


130 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


I have not observed that oats suffer from insects, except from the uni- 
versal subterranean destroyer of the grasses, the wire-worm, of which 1 
shall give you a more full account hereafter; and occasionally from an 
Aphis. 

Buckwheat (Polygonum fagopyrum), a grain little cultivated with us, 
except as food for pheasants, but which is an important crop on the Con- 
tinent on poor sandy soils, is sometimes wholly cut off, by the larve of a 
moth (Agrotis tritict), which afterwards devours the rye sown to replace 
the buckwheat ; and millet, also a considerable continental crop, is occa- 
sionally much damaged by the larve of another moth (Botys silacealis), 
which, eating into the stem of the plants, causes them to wither and die. 

The only important grain that now remains unnoticed is the maize, or 
Indian corn. Besides the chintz bug-fly, a little beetle? (Phaleria cornuta) 
appears to devour it; and it has probably other unrecorded enemies. ‘The 
Guinea corn of America (Holcus bicolor), as well as other kinds of grain, 
is, according to Abbott, often much injured by the larva of a moth, 
(Noctua frugiperda Smith,) which feeds upon the main shoot.? 

Next to grain pulse is useful to us, both when cultivated in our gardens 
and in our fields. Peas and beans, which form so material a part of the 
produce of the farm, are exposed to the attack of a numerous host of 
insect depredators ; indeed the former, on account of their ravages, is one 
of the most uncertain of our crops. The animals from which in this 
country both these plants suffer most are the Aphides, commonly called 
leaf-lice, but which properly should be denominated plant-lice. As almost . 
every animal has its peculiar douse, so has almost every plant its peculiar 
plant-louse ; and, next to locusts, these are the greatest enemies of the 


wooden floor of the story above. What was remarkable, as Mr. Raddon communicated 
to the Entomological Society (Trans. ii. proc, Ixvii.), was the great depth to which the 
Jarve had bored in the wood, even through knots filled with turpentine, so as to convert 
portions of the wood-work in places quite into a honey-comb, and thus to be almost as 
injurious to the building as to the corn stored in it. Our first idea was that this boring was 
simply for the purpose of gnawing off portions of wood with which to form their cocoons 
before becoming pupe, but the powdery masses hanging from the entrance of the holes 
had, when viewed under a lens, so completely the appearance of excrement, that we were 
at last forced to the conclusion, however strange and improbable it may seem, that these 
larve, after eating ad libitum of barley, voluntarily quit it, and actually eat and digest fir- 
wood, even to the very knots saturated with turpentine. In fact, the great depth to which 
they bore is inconsistent with the supposition of their object being merely to detach woody 
fibres as a covering for their cocoons. That their main purpose (whether we suppose the 
excavated wood to be eaten and digested or not) is to provide a retreat for the larve, 
which remain in this state the whole winter, and do not become pupz till spring, is proved 
by the fact that it is from the mouths of these holes (after every portion of the excrement 
hanging from them has been swept away, and the whole ceiling thickly lime-washed, as it 
is every autumn) that the moths emerge by thousands in the month of June, as yearly 
takes place in Messrs. Hellicar’s granaries. The further investigation, which is so evident- 
ly required, as to the strange anomaly of these larva seeming to eat and digest wood after 
devouring as much barley as they choose, 1 have recommended to my friend G. H. K. 
Thwaite, Esq. of Bristol, whose habits of close observation so well fit him for throwing 
light on the subject; and meanwhile it may be here observed, that the facts stated of the 
great damage done to vessels that bring bones, hoofs, and horns from Brazil, and in one 
case to a large parcel of cork-wood, by the larvee of Dermestes vulpinus, which, after eating 
their fill of animal matter, attack wood and cork, seem of an analogous kind to those 
above mentioned, unless in these instances the wood and cork are merely gnawed, and not 
eaten and digested. (See Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. Ixviii. ; and Shuckard’s Ele- 
ments of Brit. Ent. i. 189.) 

1 Kollar on Ins. inj, to Gardeners, &c. 102—110, 

2 This insect was taken in maize by Mr. Sparshall of Norwich. 

3 Smith’s Abbott’s Insects of Georgia, 191. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 131 


vegetable world, and, like them, are sometimes so numerous as to darken 
the air.! The multiplication of these little creatures is infinite, and almost 
incredible. Providence has endued them with privileges promoting fecun- 
dity, which no other insects possess: at one time of the year they are 
viviparous, at another oviparous; and, what is most remarkable and with- 
out parallel, the sexual intercourse of one original pair serves for all the 
generations which proceed from the female for a whole succeeding year. 
Reaumur has proved that in five generations one Aphis may be the pro- 
genitor of 5,904,900,000 descendants ; and it is supposed that in one year 
there may be twenty generations.2 This astonishing fecundity exceeds 
that of any known animal; and we cannot wonder that a creature so pro- 
lific should be proportionably injurious: some species, however, seem 
more so than others. ‘Those that attack wheat, oats, and barley, of which 
there are more kinds than one, seldom multiply so fast as to be very nox- 
ious to those plants; while those which attack pulse spread so rapidly, 
and take such entire possession, that the crop is greatly injured, and some- 
times destroyed by them. ‘This was the case with respect to peas in the 
year 1810, when the produce was not much more than the seed sown ; 
and many farmers turned their swine into their pea-fields, not thinking 
them worth harvesting. ‘The damage in this instance was caused solely 
by the Aphis, and was universal throughout the kingdom, so that a suffi- 
cient supply for the navy could not be obtained. ‘The’earlier peas are 
sown the better chance they stand of escaping, at least in part, the effects 
of this vegetable Phthiriasis. Beans are also often great sufferers from 
another species of plant-louse, in some districts, from its color, called the 
Collier, in others the Dolphin, which begins at the top of the plant, and 
so keeps multiplying downwards. ‘The best remedy in this case, which 
also tends to set the beans well, and improves both their quality and quan- 
tity, is to top them as soon as the Aphides begin to appear, and carrying 
away the tops to burn or bury them. In a late stage of growth great 
havoc is often made in peas by the grub of a small beetle (Bruchus gra- 
narius), which will sometimes lay an egg in every pea of a pod, and thus 
destroy it. Something similar, I have been told (I suspect it is a short- 
snouted weevil), occasionally injures beans. In this country, however, 
the mischief caused by the Bruchus is seldom very serious ; but in North 
America another species (B. pis), which is also found here, but not to 
any very injurious extent, is most alarmingly destructive, its ravages 
having been at one time so universal as to put an end in some places ~ to 
the cultivation of that favorite pulse. No wonder, then, that Kalm should 
have been thrown into such a trepidation upon discovering some of these 
pestilent insects just disclosed in a parcel of peas he had brought from 
that country, lest he should be the instrument of introducing so fatal an 
evil into his beloved Sweden.? In the year 1780 an alarm was spread in 
some parts of France, that people had been poisoned by eating worm- 
eaten peas, and they were forbidden by authority to be exposed for sale 
in the market; but the fears of the public were soon removed by the 
examination of some scientific men, who found the cause of the injury to 
be the insect of which I am now speaking.* Another species of Bruchus 


1 [ say this upon the authority of Mr. Wolnough of Hollesley (late of Boyton) in Suffolk, 
an intelligent agriculturist, and a = acute and accurate observer of nature. 


* Reaum. vi. 566. 3 Kalm’s Travels, i. 173. 4 Amoreux, 288. 


~ 


132 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


(B. pectinicornis) devours the peas in China and Barbary. A leguminous 
seed, much used when boiled as food for horses in India, known to Euro- 
peans by the name of Gram, but in the Tamul dialect called Koloo, and by 
the Moors Cooltee, is the appropriate food of a fourth kind of Bruchus, 
related to the last, but having the antenne, which in the male are pecti- 
nated, much shorter than the body. It is, perhaps, B. scwtellaris. A 
parcel of this seed' given me by Captain Green was full of this insect, 
several grains containing two. Indeed, in tropical climates, the seeds of 
almost every pod-bearing plant, as of the genera Gleditsia, Theobroma, 
Mimosa, Robinia, &c., are eaten by some species of Bruchus, as are the 
cocoa-nut and palm-nut.? Molina, in his History of Chili, tells us of a 
beetle, which he names Lucanus pilmus, that infests the beans in that 
country ;—a circumstance quite at variance with the habits of the Lucan- 
ide, which all prey upon timber. ‘This insect was probably a Phaleria, 
in which genus the mandibles are protruded from the head, like those of 
Lucanus ; and one species, as we have seen above, feeds upon maize. 

Great profits are sometimes derived by farmers from their crops of 
clover-seed: but this does not happen very often; for a small weevil 
(Apion flavifemoratum), which abounds every where at almost all times 
of the year, feeds upon the seed of the purple clover, and in most seasons 
does the crop considerable damage ; so that a plant of the fairest appear- 
ance will, in consequence of the voracity of this little enemy, produce 
scarcely anything. Another species (Apion flavipes) infests the Dutch 
or white clover. The young plants of purple clover, when just sprung, 
are often, as Mr. Joseph Stickney pointed out to me, much injured by the 
same little jumping beetles (Haltica) that attack the turnips. In Ger- 
many, where Rape is more extensively grown than with us for the seed, 
the crop sometimes wholly fails from the attacks of a small grub, supposed 
to be that of a weevil of the genera Nedyus or Ceutorhynchus, which, 
piercing the stalks from the base to the summit, deprives the blossom of 
the due supply of sap, and thus causes it to perish.* ; 

But not only, if let loose to the work of destruction, might insects 
annihilate our grain and pulse ; they would also deprive the earth of that 
beautiful green carpet which now covers it, and is so agreeable and so 
refreshing to the sight. When you see a large tract of land lying fallow, 
as is sometimes the case in open districts, with no intervening patches of 
verdure, how unpleasant and uncomfortable is it to youreye! What then 
would be your sensations were the whole face of the earth bare, and not 
dressed by Flora? But such a state of things would soon take place if, 
to punish us, or to teach us thankfulness to the great Arbiter, of our fate, 
the insects that feed upon the grass of our pastures were to become as 
generally numerous as they are occasionally permitted todo. One of the 
worst of these ravagers is the grub of the common cockchafer (Melolontha 
vulgaris). This insect, which is found to remain in the larva state four 
years, sometimes destroys whole acres of grass, as I can aver from my 


1 I have raised plants from this seed, which appear from the foliage to belong either to 
Phaseolus or Dolichos. 

2 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. i. 330.; and in Loudon’s Gardener's Mag. No. 87. p. 287. 

5 Markwick, Marsham, and Lehmann, in Linn. Trans. vi. 142—.; and Kirby in ditto, 
ix. 37. 42. n. 19, 23. 

4 Keferstein in Silbermann’s Revue Ent. i. 135, 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 133 


own observation. It undermines the richest meadows, and so loosens the 
turf that it will roll up as if cut with a turfing-spade. ‘These grubs did 
so much injury about seventy years ago to a poor farmer near Norwich, 
that the court of that city, out of compassion, allowed him 25/., and the 
man and his servant declared that he had gathered eighty bushels of the 
beetle.! In the year 1785 many provinces of France were so ravaged by 
them, that a premium was offered by the government for the best mode of 
destroying them. They do not confine themselves to grass, but eat also 
the roots of corn ; and it is to feast upon this grub more particularly that 
the rooks follow the plough.? 

The larva also of another species of a cognate genus (Hoplia pulver- 
ulenta) is extremely destructive in moist meadows, rooting under the her- 
bage, so that, the soil becoming loose, the grass soon withers and dies. 
Swine are very fond of these grubs, and will devour vast numbers of them, 
and the rooks.Jend their assistance. 

Amongst the Lepidoptera, the greatest enemy of our pastures is the 
Chareas Graminis, which, however, is said not to touch the foxtail grass. 
In the years 1740, 1741, 1742, 1748, 1749, they multiplied so prodig- 
iously and committed such ravages in many provinces of Sweden, that the 
meadows became quite white and dry as if a fire had passed over them.* 
This destructive insect, though found in this country, is luckily scarce 
amongst us; but our northern neighbors appear occasionally to have suffer- 
ed greatly from it. In 1759, and again in 1802, the high sheep farms in 
Tweedale were dreadfully infested by a caterpillar, which was probably 
the larva of this moth; spots of a mile square were totally covered by 
them, and the grass devoured to the root.4 In 1835 the larve of this 
moth so infested some districts in Bohemia that Prince Clary, by employ- 
ing two hundred men for four and a half days, collected twenty-three 
bushels, computed to contain four and a half millions of caterpillars.° 

Grasses both natural and artificial are attacked by the larve of several 
species of beetles. ‘Those of Coccinella tmpunctata (which with C. 
Argus Scriba, and some other species, live on vegetable food) destroy, in 
Germany, sainfoin, clover, and tares ; those of Colaspis barbara, in Spain, 
whole fields of lucerne (Medicago sativa®); and those of Galleruca 
Tanaceti, natural pasturage, having greatly injured that of Mount Jura in 
Switzerland in 1833.7 Even the seeds of grasses have their insect 
enemies. Mr. H. Gibbs stated at the meeting of the Royal Agricultural 
Society, May 5, 1841, that generally not one in a dozen of the seeds of 
the Foxtail grasses (Alopecurus) vegetate, owing to their vitality being 
destroyed by a small orange-colored grub (Ceczdomyza ?).® 

Most of the insects I have hitherto mentioned attack our crops partially, 
confining themselves to one or two kinds only ; but there are some species 
ae aa! ee 

* There would seem to be a prospect of cockchafers being made in some degree to repay 
the previous injury they cause, if the statement in the newspapers (June, 1841,) be correct, 
that M. Breard, mayor of Honfleur in France, and proprieter of an oil mill, having offered 


one frane per bushel for cockchafers, procured seventeen bushels, from which he obtained 
twenty-eight quarts of good lamp oil. A kind of grease has also lately been made from 
them in Hungary. 

3 De Geer, ii. 341. Amen. Acad. iii. 355. "4 Farmer’s Mag. iii. 487. 

5 Kollar on Ins. injurious to Gardeners, &c. 105, 126. 

6 Dufour, Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, v. 372. 

7 Ibid. iii. 19. 9 8 Gardener's Chronicle, 1841. p. 311. 

1 


134 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


which extend their ravages indifferently to all. Of this description is the 
Pyralis (?) frumentalis, which moth, Pallas tell us, is an almost universal 
pest in the government of Kasan in Russia, often eating the greater part 
of the spring corn to the root.! To this we are fortunately strangers ; 
but another, well known by the name of the wire-worm, causes annually 
a large diminution of the produce of our fields, destroying indiscriminately 
wheat, rye, oats, and grass. This insect, which has its name apparently 
from its slender form, and uncommon hardness and toughness, is the grub 
of one of the elastic beetles termed by Linné Elater lineatus, but by 
Bierkander, to whom we are indebted for its history, E. Segetis® (Agriotes 
lineatus Eschscholtz). The late ingenious Mr. Paul of Starston in Norfolk 
(well known as the inventor of a machine to entrap the turnip-beetle, 
which may be applied by collectors with great advantage to general pur- 
poses,) has also succeeded in tracing this insect from the larva to the imago 
state. His larve produced Elater obscurus of Mr. Marsham, which how- 
ever-comes so near to E. Segetzs that it is doubtful whether it be more 
than a variety. The other species, however, of the genus have similar 
larve, many of which probably contribute to the mischief. When told 
that it lives in its first (or feeding) state not less than five years, during 
the greatest part of which time it is supported by devouring the roots of 
grain, though it will also attack and often much injure turnips, potatoes, 
&c., you will not wonder that its ravages should be so extensive, and that 
whole crops should sometimes be cut off by it. As it abounds chiefly in 
newly broken-up land, though the roots of the grasses supply it with food, 
it probably does not do any great injury to our meadows and pastures.® 
Here also may be included the larva of the long-legged gnat (Tipula 
oleracea), known in many parts by the name of the grub, which is some- 
times very prejudicial to the grass in marshy lands, and at others not less 
so tocorn. Reaumur informs us, that in Poitou, in certain years, the grass 
of whole districts has been so destroyed by it, as not to produce the food 


1 Pallas’s Travels in South Russia, i. 30. 

? Marsham in Communications to the Board of Agriculture, iv. 412. Plate viii. fig. 4. and 
Linn. Trans. ix. 160. 

3 The wire-worm is particularly destructive for a few years in gardens recently convert- 
ed from pasture ground. In the Botanic Garden at Hull thus cireumstanced a great pro- 
portion of the annuals sown in 1813 were destroyed by it. A very simple and effectual 
remedy in such cases was mentioned to me by Sir Joseph Banks. He recommended that 
shees of potato stuck upon skewers should be buried near the seeds sown, examined every 
day, and the wire-worms which collect upon them in great numbers destroyed. 

This plan of decoying destructive animals from our crops by offering them more tempt- 
ing food is excellent, and deserves to be pursued in other instances. It was very success- 
fully employed in 1813 by J. M. Rodwell, Esq. of Barham Hall near Ipswich, one of the 
most skilful and best-informed agriculturists in the county of Suffolk, to preserve some of 
his wheat fields from the ravages of a small grey slug, which threatened to demolish the 
plant. Having heard that turnips had been used with success to entice the slugs from 
wheat, he caused a sufficient quantity to dress eight acres to be got together; and then, the 
tops being divided and the apples sliced, he directed the pieces to be Jaid separately, dress- 
ing two stetches with them and omitting two alternately, till the whole field of eight acres 
was gone over. On the following morning he employed two women to examine and free 
from the slugs, which they did into a measure, the tops and slices; and when cleared, they 
were laid upon those stetches that had been omitted the day before. It was observed 
invariably, that in the stetches dressed with the turnips no slugs were to be found upon the 
wheat or crawling upon the land, though they abounded upon the turnips; while on the 
undressed stetches they were tou be seen in great numbers both on the wheat and on the 
land. The quantity of slugs thus collected was near a bushel.—Mr. Rodwell is persuaded 
that by this plan he saved his wheat from essential injary. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 135 


necessary for the sustenance of the cattle! In many parts of England, 
in Holderness particularly, it cuts off a large proportion of the wheat 
crops, especially if sown upon clover-lays.?_ Reaumur concludes from the 
observations he made that it lives solely upon earth, and consequently 
that the injury which it occasions, arises from its loosening the roots of 
corn and grass by burrowing amongst them: but my friend Mr. Stickney, 
the intelligent author of a treatise upon this insect, is inclined to think 
from his experiments that it feeds on the roots themselves. However this 
may be, the evil produced is evident; and it appears too from the observa- 
tions of the gentleman last mentioned, that this animal is not killed by 
lime applied in much larger doses than usual.? 

Our national beverage ale, so valuable and heartening to the lower 
orders, and so infinitely preferable to ardent spirits, is indebted to another 
vegetable, the hop, for its agreeable conservative bitter. This plant, so 
precious, has numerous enemies in the Lilliputian world to which I am 
introducing you. Its roots are subject to the attack of the caterpillar of 
a singular species of moth (Hepialus Humuli), known to collectors by the 
name of the ghost, that sometimes does them considerable injury.A—A 
small beetle also (Haltica concinna) is particularly destructive to the tender 
shoots early in the year; and upon the presence or absence of Aphides, 
known by the name of the jly, as in the case of peas, the crop of every 
year depends; so that the hop-grower is wholly at the mercy of insects. 
They are the barometer that indicates the rise and fall of his wealth, 
as of a very important branch of the revenue, the difference in the 
amount of the duty on hops being often as much as 200,000/. per annum, 
more or less, in proportion as the fly prevails or the contrary.” 

If the beer-drinker be thus interested in the history of these animals, 
equally so is the drinker of tea. Indeed sugar is an article so universally 


1 Reaum. v. 11. . 

2 Two species are confounded under the appellation of the grub, the larve namely of 
Tipula oleracea and cornicina, which last is very injurious, though not equal with the first. 
In the rich district of Sunk Island in Holderness, in the spring of 1813, hundreds of acres 
of bs lt were efitirely destroyed by them, being rendered as completely brown as if they 
had suffered a three months’ drought, and destitute of all vegetation except that of a few 
thistles. A square foot of the dead turf being dug up, 210 grubs were counted in it! and, 
what furnishes a striking proof of the prolitic powers of these insects, the next year it was 
difficult to find a single one. 

3 Stickney’s Observations on the Grub. 4 De Geer, i. 487. 

5 Tt would not be difficult to show that nearly the whole of this large sum, and their own 
still greater losses, are thrown away by the hop planters from their ignorance of entomology. 
Led by their old prejudices of the fly being produced by cold winds, &c., they do nothing 
towards its destruction, though if aware of the way in which it is generated (as lately ex- 
plained), and that by killing each female as it appears early in the spring, they would pre- 
vent the birth not of thousands but of millions of aphides, were they to take meusures for 
thus lessening the number of their destructive enemy, they might in great measure secure 
themselves from its attacks, The aphides being so soft are killed with the slightest 
pressure ; so that it is merely necessary to rub an infested leaf between the thumb and 
fingers, with a force quite insufficient to injure its texture, to destroy every aphis upon it; 
and, from experiments which I myself made in the hop grounds of Worcestershire when at 
Malvern in 1838, I am persuaded that every leaf of each hop plant might be thus cleared 
of the female aphides, first attacking it in spring, by women or children mounted on step 
ladders for this purpose, in ten minutes or less; so that six plants being cleared per hour, 
sixty might be cleared per day at an expense of a shilling for labor, and the first eost of a 
few step ladders ; and by repeating the operation every week or fortnight, there can be no 
doubt a hop plantation might be effectually preserved from the fly ; as it might earlier in 
the spring from the flea (Haltica concinna), by shaking them into a kind of wide and deep 
sieve (divided into two halves with a circular space for the hop poles and hop stems) with 
@ linen bottom and bag for preventing them from jumping out again. 


136 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


useful and agreeable, that what concerns the cane that produces it seems 
toconcern every one. This also affords a tempting food to insects. The 
caterpillar of a white moth, called the borer, for destroying which a gold 
medal has been Icng offered by the Society of Arts, is, in this respect, a great 
nuisance, boring into the centre of the stem, and often destroying a great 
proportion of the crop. This insect (for his essay on which he received 
the offered medal) has been described by the Rev. L. Guilding, in the 
Transactions of the Society of Arts (xlvi. 143.), under the name of Dia- 
trea Sacchari, which, however, Mr. Westwood conceives is identical with 
Phalena saccharalis Fab.1 An ant also (Formica analis) makes a lodg- 
ment in the interior of the sugar-cane in Guinea, and destroys it.—Ano- 
ther species of the latter genus does not devour it, and is therefore impro- 
perly called Formica saccharivora by Linné; but, by making its nest for 
shelter under the roots so injures the plants that they become unhealthy 
and unproductive. ‘These insects about seventy years ago appeared in 
such infinite hosts in the island of Granada, as to put a stop to the culti- 
vation of this plant; and a reward'of 20,000/. was offered to any one 
who should discover an effectual mode of destroying them. Their num- 
bers were incredible. ‘They descended from the hills like torrents, and 
the plantations, as well as every path and road for miles, were filled with 
them. Many domestic quadrupeds perished in consequence of this plague. 
Rats, mice, and reptiles of every kind became an easy prey to them: 
and even the birds, which they attacked whenever they alighted on the 
ground in search of food, were so harassed as to be at length unable to 
resist them. Streams of water opposed only a temporary obstacle to their 
progress, the foremost rushing blindly on to certain death, and fresh armies 
instantly following, till a bank was formed of the carcases of those that 
were drowned sufficient to dam up the waters, and allow the main body 
to pass over in safety below. Even the all-devouring element of fire was 
tried in vaing When lighted to arrest their route, they rushed into the 
blaze in such myriads of millions as to extinguish it. Those that thus 
patriotically devoted themselves to certain death for the common good, 
were but as the pioneers or advanced guard of a countless army, which 
by their self-sacrifice was enabled to pass unimpeded and unhurt. The 
entire crops of standing canes were burnt down, and the earth dug up in 
every part of the plantations. But vain was every attempt of man to 
effect their destruction, till in 1780 it pleased Providence at length to 
annihilate them by the torrents of rain which accompanied a hurricane 
most fatal to the other West India Islands. ‘This dreadful pest was 
thought to have been imported.? More recently great mischief has been 
done to the sugar plantations in the island of St. Vincent, by a species of 
mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa didactyla Latr.), which destroys the young 
shoots and bores into the plant*; and to those of the island of Granada 
by the Delphax saccharivora, an homopterous insect, allied to that pro- 
ducing the cuckoo-spit, which attacks the leaves in such numbers and 
with such voracity, that some plantations which formerly made three 
hundred hogsheads of sugar per annum, had not made more than eighty 


1 Westwood, Modern Classif. of Ins. ii. 411. 
® Castle in Philos. Trans, xxx. 346, 
3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. x. xxiv. xxxi. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 137 


or ninety in 1834, at which time, as stated by J. C. Johnstone, Esq., two 
thirds of the island were suffering from its ravages, and the insect was 
extending itself to the neighboring islands.! Besides these enemies, the 
sugar-cane has also its Aphis, which sometimes destroys the whole crop? ; 
and, according to Humboldt and Bonpland, the larva of Elater noctilucus 
feeds on it®, as do two weevils (Calandra Palmarum and C. Sacchart 
Guild.), whose history has been given by the late Rev. L. Guilding.* 

Three other vegetable productions of the New World, cotton, tobacco, 
and coffee, which are also valuable articles of commerce, receive great 
injury from the depredations of insects. M’Kinnen, in his tour through 
the West Indies, states that in 1788 and 1794 two-thirds of the crop of 
cotton in Crooked Island, one of the Bahamas, was destroyed by the 
chenille (probably a lepidopterus larva®); and the red bug, an insect 
equally noxious, stained it so much in some places as to render itof little or 
no value. Browne relates that in Jamaica a bug destroys whole fields of 
this plant, and the caterpillar of that beautiful butterfly Helicopis Cupido 
also feeds upon it.6 That of a hawk-moth, Sphinx Carolina, is the 
greatest pest of tobacco: and it is attacked likewise by the larva of a 
moth, Phalena Rhexie Smith’, and by other insects of the names and 
kind of which I am ignorant; and the coffee plantations in Guadeloupe 
and other of the West Indian Islands are ravaged by the larve of a little 
moth (£lachista Coffeella)® 

Roots are another important object of agriculture, which, however, as 
to many of them, they may seem to be defended by the earth that covers 
them, do not escape the attack of insect-enemies.—The carrot, which 
forms a valuable part of the crop of the sand-land farms in Suffolk, is 
often very much injured, as is also the parsnip, by a small centipede (Geo- 
philus electricus), and another polypod (Polydesmus complanatus), which 
eat into various Jabyrinths the upper part of their roots; and they are 
both sometimes totally destroyed by the maggot of some dipterous insect, 
probably one of the Muscide. I had an opportunity of noticing this in 
the month of July, in the year 1812, in the garden of our valued friend 
the Rev. Revett Sheppard of Offton in Suffolk. The plants appeared 
many of them in a dying state; and upon drawing them out of the 
ground to ascertain the cause, these Jarve were found with their head and 
half of their body immersed in the root in an oblique direction, and in 
many instances they had eaten off the end of it.° The larva of a little 
moth (Hemilis daucelia), described by Bouché, feeds upon the seeds both 
of the carrot and parsnip, covering the umbel with a silken web, and in 
some years destroys the whole crop.” 


1 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. xxvii. xx. and Westwood, in Mag. Nat. Hist. vi. 407. 

? Browne’s Civil and Nat. Hist. of Jamaica, 430. 

3 Essai sur la Géographie des Plantes, 136. 

4 Westwood, Modern Class. of Ins, i. 347. 

5 At the meeting of the Entomological Society on the 6th June, 1842, Mr. W. W. Saun- 
ders read a memoir on Depressiaria Gossypiella, a small moth, the caterpillar of which is 
very destructive to the cotton crops in India. 

§ M’Kinnen, 171. Browne, ubi supr. Merian, Ins. Sur. 10. 

7 Smith and Abbot, Insects of Georgia, 199. 

8 Guérin-Méneville, Rev. Zool. 1842, p. 24. 

® The larve above noticed were probably those of Psila Rose Meigen (Psilomyia Rosa 
Macquart), which Kollar (p. 161.) describes as attacking carrots, residing chiefly in the 
main root near the end. 1 K6llar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, Sc. 159. 


12* 


138 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 

America has made us no present more extensively beneficial, compared 
with which the mines of Potosi are worthless, than the potato. This in- 
valuable root, which is now so universally cultivated, is often, in this 
country, considerably injured by the two insects first mentioned as attack- 
ing the carrot, and also by the wire-worm. The Death’s-head-hawk- 
moth (Acherontia Atropos) in its larva state feeds upon its leaves, though 
without much injury. In America it is said to suffer much from two 
beetles (Cantharis cinerea and vittata), of the same genus with the blister- 
beetle’; and: another species, C. verticalis, in 1839 wholly destroyed the 
leaves of the crops at Volterra in Tuscany.” In the island of Barbadoes 
some hemipterous insect, supposed to be a Tettigonia, occasionally attacks 
them. In 1734 and 1735 vast swarms devoured almost every vegetable 
production of that island, particularly the potato, and thus occasioned 
such a failure of this excellent esculent, especially in one parish, that a 
collection was made throughout the island for the relief of the poor, whose 
principal food it forms. 

The chief dependence of our farmers for the sustenance of their cattle 
in the winter is another most valuable root, the turnip, the introduction of 
which into our system of agriculture has added millions to our national 
revenue ; and they have often to lament the loss and distress occasioned 
by a failure in this crop, of which these minor animals are the cause. On 
its first coming up, as soon as the cotyledon leaves are unfolded, a whole 
host of little jumping beetles, composed chiefly of Haltica Nemorum, 
called by farmers the fly* and black jack, but assisted also by other species, 
as H. concinna, attack and devour them; so that, on account of their rav- 
ages, the land is often obliged to be resown, and frequently with no better 
success. It has been calculated by an eminent agriculturist, that from 
this cause alone the loss sustained in the turnip crops in Devonshire in 
1786 was not less than 100,000/.4 | Much damage is also sometimes occa- 
sioned by a little weevil (Nedyus contractus), which in the same manner 
pierces a hole in the cuticle. When the plant is more advanced, and_out 
of danger from these pigmy foes, the black larve of a saw-fly (Athalia 
Centifolie), called by the farmers the “ black”’ and “ nigger” caterpillars, 
take their place, and occasionally do no little mischief, whole districts 
being sometimes nearly stripped by them; so that in 1782 and 1783, 
many thousand acres were on this account ploughed up; and in 1835, 
1836 and 1837, the injury was not less extensive.° The caterpillar of 
the cabbage-butterfly (Pontia Brassice) is also sometimes found upon the 


1 Illiger, Mag. i, 256. * Passerini, quoted in Rev. Zool. 1841, p. 354. 

3 The farmers would do well to change the name of this insect from turnip-fly to ae 
flea, since, from its diminutive size and activity in leaping, the latter name is mucht 
most proper. The term, the fy, might with propriety be restricted to the Hop-aphis, and 
other species of the same genus; and this is the more desirable, because the hop is also 
subject to the attack of a Haltica, which the hop planters are judiciously beginning to dis- 
tinguish by the name of the “ flea.” 

4 Young’s Annals of Agriculture, vii. 102. Fora full history of Haltica Nemorum, from 
the egg to its perfect state, see the very valuable paper of Henry Le Keux, Esq., in the 
Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (ii. 24.), who, though no entomologist 
or agriculturist, has by his practical good sense and habits of patient and accurate observa- 
tion, thrown more light on this previously obscure subject than all his predecessors. 

§ Marshal in Philos. Trans. \xxiii. 1783. See Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. \xvi., ti. 

roc, xxviii. and the admirable Prize Essay, containing a full history of this insect by G. 
ewpo, Esq., 1838. See also the valuable papers on this insect, and on the turnip-flea in 
Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, vol. ii. by John Curtis, Esq. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 139 


turnip in great numbers; and Sir Joseph Banks informs me that forty or 
fifty of the insects before mentioned, called by Mr. Walford the wire- 
worm, but more probably, as there observed, the larve of one of the tribe 
of Brachyptera or love-beetles, have been discovered in October just 
below the leaves in a single bulb of this plant.—The small knob or tuber- 
cle often observable on these roots is inhabited by a grub, which resembles 
one found in similar knobs on the roots of sinapis arvensis (from which I 
have bred Nedyus contractus and N. assimilis, small weevils nearly related 
to each other), and like it produces a small weevil, Ceutorhynchus sulci- 
collis. This, however, does not seem to affect their growth. Great mis- 
chief is occasionally done to the young plants by the wire-worm. I was 
shown a field last summer in which they had destroyed one-fourth of the 
crop, and the gentleman who showed them to me calculated that his loss 
by them would be 100/. One year he sowed a field thrice with turnips, 
which were twice wholly, and the third time in great part, cut off by this 
insect.1 The roots are also sometimes seriously injured by the caterpillars 
of the moth (Agrotis segetum) before mentioned, as destructive to wheat 
crops on the Continent. Whether the disease to which turnips are sub- 
ject, in some parts of the kingdom, from the form of the excrescences 
into which the bulb shoots, called fingers and toes, be occasioned by 
insects, is not certainly known.? Another root, the Beet, which has within 
the last twenty years been almost as extensively cultivated in France for 
the manufacture of sugar as turnips with us, is much injured by a small 
beetle, a new species of Cryptophagus described by M. Macquart (C. 
Bete), which devours the plants as soon as they appear above ground.® 


We have wandered long enough about the fields to observe the progress 
of insect devastation: let us now return home to visit the domains of 
Flora and Pomona, that we may see whether their subjects are exposed to 
equal maltreatment. If we begin with the kitchen-garden, we shall find 
that its various productions, ministering so materially to our daily comfort 
and enjoyment, almost all suffer more or less from the attack of the animals 
we are considering.—Thus, the earliest of our table dainties, radishes, 
are devoured by the maggot of a fly (Anthomyia radicum), assisted by 
those of a very small beetle (Latridius porcatus*), and our lettuces by the 
caterpillars of several species of moth; one of which is the beautiful 
tiger-moth (Euprepia Caja), another the pot-herb-moth (Mamestra olera- 
cea), a third anonymous, described by Reaumur, as beginning at the root, 
eating itself a mansion in the stem, and so destroying the plant before it 
cabbages.> And when they are come to their perfection and appear fit 


} Trans. Ent, Soc. Lond, ii. proc. xxx. A striking instance of the use of hand-picking 
(in most cases by far the most effective mode of getting rid of insects) appeared in the 
West Briton, a provincial paper, in November, 1838, stating that Mr. G. Pearce of Pennare 
Goran had saved an acre and a half of turnips, sown to replace wheat destroyed by the 
wire-worm and attacked by hosts of these larvz, by seiting boys to collect them, who, at 
the rate of three half pence per 100, gathered 18,000, as many as 50 having been taken 
from one turnip. Thus at an expense of only 1/. 2s. 6d. an acre and a half of turnips, 
worth from 5/. to 7/. or more, was saved ; while as the boys could each collect 600 per day, 
a” i 6 apiece was given to them at 9d, per day, which. they would not otherwise 

ave had. 

2 Spence’s Observations on the Disease in Turnips called Fingers and Toes, Hull, 1812. 8vo. 

3 Ann. Sc. Nat. xxiii. 94. quoted by Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. i. 148. 

4 Kyber in Germar’s Mag, der Entom. i. 1. 5 Reaum, ii. 471. 


140 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


for the table, their beauty and delicacy are often marred by the trouble- 
some earwig, which, insinuating itself into them, defiles them with its 
excrements ; while the seed is often nearly wholly destroyed (as was the 
case in Suffolk in 1836 and the three following years) by the grubs of a 
fly (Anthomyia Lactuce Bouché) which live in the involucre, and feed 
on the seeds and receptacle! What more acceptable vegetable in the 
spring than brocoli? Yet how dreadfully is its foliage often ravaged in 
the autumn by numerous hordes of the cabbage-butterfly ! so that, in an 
extensive garden, you will sometimes see nothing left of the leaves except 
the veins and stalks.—What more useful, again, than the cabbage? Be- 
sides the same insect, which injures them in a similar way, and a species 
of field-bug (Pentatoma ornata), which pierces the leaves like a sieve®, in 
some countries they are infested by the caterpillar of a most destructive 
moth (Mamestra Brassice), to which I have before alluded; which, not 
content with the leaves, penetrates into the very heart of the plant.2—One 
of the most delicate and admired of all table vegetables, concerning which 
gardeners are most apt to pride themselves, and bestow much pains to 
produce in perfection, I mean the cauliflower, is often attacked by a fly, 
which, ovipositing in that part of the stalk covered by the earth, the 
maggots, when hatched, occasion the plant to wither and die, or to produce 
a worthless head.4 Even when the head is good and handsome, if not 
carefully examined previous to being cooked, it is often rendered disgusting 
by earwigs that have crept into it, or the green caterpillar of Pontia 
Rape. In 1836, as we learn from Mr. Westwood, great injury was done 
in the market gardens to the west of London to the cauliflowers and other 
plants of the cabbage tribe by a species of aphis covered with a purple 
powder, which had not been before observed by the gardeners who called 
it a new kind of blight.® 


1 Curtis in Gardener’s Chronicle, 1841, p, 363. 

2 K6llar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. p. 148. 

3 De Geer, ii. 440. In the summer of 1826 when at Brussels, I observed that delicious 
vegetable of the cabbage tribe so largely cultivated there under the name of Jets de chouz, 
and which in England we call Brussels sprouts, to be materially injured in the Jater stages 
of its growth by the attacks of the turnip-flea, and other little beetles of the same genus 
(Haltica), which were so numerous and so universally prevalent, that I scarcely ever ex- 
amined a full-grown plant from which a vast number might not have been collected, 
Some plants were almost black with them, the species most abundant being of a dark cop- 
per tinge. They had not merely eroded the cuticle in various parts, so as to give the leaves 
a brown blistered appearance, but had also eaten them into large holes, at the margin of 
which I often saw them in the act of gnawing; and the stunted and unhealthy appearance 
of the plants sufficiently indicated the injurious effect of this interruption of the proper 
office of the sap. What was particularly remarkable, considering the locomotive powers of 
these insects, was that the young turnips, sown in August after the wheat and rye, close to 
acres of Brussels sprouts (which all round Brussels are planted in the open fields among 
other crops), infested by myriads of these insects, were not more eaten by them than they 
usually are in England, and produced good average crops. It would seem, agreeably to a 
fact which I shall mention in its place in speaking of the food of insects, that they prefer 
the taste of leaves to which they have been accustomed, to younger plants of the same 
natural family ; and hence perhaps the previous sowing of a crop of cabbage-plants in the 
corner of a field meant for turnips, might allure and keep there the great bulk of these 
insects present in the vicinity, until the turnips were out of danger. 

4 Perhaps this fly is the same which Linné confounded with Tachina Larvarum, which 
he says he had found in the roots of the cabbage ( Syst. Nat. 992.78.) I say “confounded,” 
because it is not likely that the same species should be parasitic in an insect, and also inba- 
bit a vegetable, It is obviously the same described by K6llar from Bouché under the name 
of Anthomyia Brassice (159), which he states often destroys whole fields of cabbages by 
boring into the roots and stalks. 

5 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. xxi. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 141 


Our peas, beans, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and potatoes are attacked in 
the garden by the same enemies that injure them in the fields’; | shall 
therefore dismiss them without further notice, and point out those which 
infest another of our most esteemed kinds of pulse, kidney beans. These 
are principally Aphides, which in dry seasons ‘are extremely injurious to 
them. The fluid which they secrete, falling upon the leaves, causes them 
to turn black as if sprinkled with soot ; and the nutriment being subtract- 
ed from the pods by their constant suction, they are prevented from com- 
ing to their proper size or perfection. The beans also which they contain 
are sometimes devoured by the caterpillar of a small moth.?—Onions, 
which add a relish to the poor man’s crusts and cheese, and form so mate- 
rial an ingredient in the most savory dishes of the rich, are also the favorite 
food of the maggot of a fly, that often does considerable damage to the 
crop.—F rom this maggot (for a supply of onions containing which I have 
to thank my friend Mr. Campbell, surgeon, of Hedon near Hull, where it 
is very injurious, particularly in light soils,) 1 have succeeded in breeding 
the fly, which proves of that tribe of the Linnean genus Musca, now 
called Anthomyia. Being apparently undescribed, and new to my valued 
correspondent Count Hoffmansegg to whom I sent it, I call it A. Cepa- 
rum.—The diuretic asparagus, towards the close of the season, is some- 
times rendered unpalateable by the numerous eggs of the asparagus beetle 
(Crioceris Asparagi), and its larve feed upon the foliage after the heads 
branch out.—Cucumbers with us enjoy an immunity from insect assailants ; 
but in America they are deprived of this privilege, an unascertained 
species, called there the cucumber-fly doing them great injury.*—The 
plants of spinach are sometimes eaten bare by the blackish-brown cater- 
pillars of the lovely little moth Glyphypteryxr Resella.A—Horse-radish (as 
well as the cabbage tribe) is attacked by the larve of another moth, 
Mesographe forficalis.°—And to name no more, ‘mushrooms, which are 
frequently cultivated and much in request, often swarm with the maggots 
of various Diptera and Coleoptera. 

The insects just enumerated are partial in their attacks, confining them- 
selves to one or two kinds of our pulse or other vegetables. But there 
are others. that devour more indiscriminately the produce of our gardens ; 
and of these in certain seasons and countries we have no greater and 
more universal enemy than the caterpillar of a moth called by entomolo- 


1 On examining some young garden peas and beans about four inches high, I observed 
the margins of the leaves to be gnawed into deep scollops by a little weevil ( Sttona lineata), 
of which I found from two to eight on each pea and bean, and many in the act of eating. 
Not only were the larger leaves of every plant thus eroded, but in many cases the terminal 
young shoots and leaves were apparently irreparably injured. I have often noticed this 
and another of the short-snouted Curculios (S. tidialis) in great abundance in pea and bean 
fields, but was not aware till now that either of them was injurious to these plants. Proba- 
bly both are so, but whether the crop is materially affected by them must be left to further 
inquiry. Garden beans still more than the field kinds, Mr. Curtis informs us, greatly suf- 
fered in 1841, from the holes which humble-bees (Bombus terrestris and lucorum) made in 
the blossoms (as they usually do) to get out the honey contained in the nectary, which ope- 
ration injuring the pods in their earliest state, four-fifths of them were destroyed, and pro- 
duced no beans. (Curtis in Gardener’s Chron. 1841, p. 485.) When at Shrewsbury in Au- 
gust 1839, I found almost every pod of the garden peas brought to market, inhabited by a 
single yellowish-white lepidopterous larva, three or four lines long, which had eaten more 
or less of each pea, but which, though several assumed the pupa state and entered the earth 
in the box in which they were placed, never became perfect moths. " 

2 Reaum. ii. 479, 3 Barton in Philos. Magaz. ix. 62. 

4 Kollar’s Ins, inj. to Gardeners, &c. p. 157. 5 Ibid, p. 155. 


. 


142 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


gists Plusia Gamme, from its having a character inscribed in gold on its 
primary wings, which resembles that Greek letter. ‘This creature affords 
a pregnant instance of the power of Providence to let loose an animal to 
the work of destruction and punishment. Though common with us, it is _ 
seldom the cause of more than trivial injury ; but in the year 1735 it was 
so incredibly multiplied in France as to infest the whole country. On the 
great roads, wherever you cast your eyes, you might see vast numbers 
traversing them in all directions to pass from field to field; but their rava- 
ges were particularly felt in the kitchen-gardens, where they devoured 
every thing, whether pulse or pot-herbs, so that nothing was left besides 
the stalks and veins of the leaves. The credulous multitude thought they 
were poisonous, report affirming that in some instances the eating of them 
had been followed by baneful effects. In consequence of this alarming 
idea, herbs were banished for several weeks from the soups of Paris. 
Fortunately these destroyers did not meddle with the corn, or famine 
would have followed in their train. Reaumur has proved that a single 
pair of these insects might in one season produce 80,000; so that were 
the friendly Ichneumons removed, to which the mercy of Heaven has given 
it in charge to keep their numbers within due limits, we should no longer 
enjoy the comfort of vegetables with our animal food, and probably soon 
become the prey of scorbutic diseases..—I must not overlook that singu- 
lar animal the mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris), which is a terrible 
devastator of the produce of the kitchen-garden. It burrows under 
ground, and devouring the roots of plants thus occasions them to wither, 
and even gets into hot-beds. It does so much mischief in Germany, that 
the author of an old book on gardening, after giving a figure of it, exclaims, 
‘“‘ Happy are the places where this pest is unknown!” - 

The flowers and shrubs that form the ornament of our parterres and 
pleasure-grounds, seem less exposed to insect depredation than the produce 
of the kitchen-garden; yet still there are not a few that suffer from it. 
The foliage of one of our greatest favorites, the rose, suffers from the 
caterpillars of the little rose-moths, Tinea (Ornix) rodophagella Kallar, 
Tortrix (Argyrotoza) Bergmanniana®, and of several other moths, and 
often loses all its loveliness and lustre from the excrements of the Aphides 
that prey upon it. The leaf-cutter bee also (Megachile* centuncularis), 
by cutting pieces out to form for its young its cells of curious construction, 
disfigures it considerably ; and the froth frog-hopper (Aphrophora spuma- 
ria,), aided by the saw-fly of the rose (Hylotoma Rose), as well as others 
of the same family, contributes to check the luxuriance of its growth, and 
to diminish the splendor of its beauty; but all these evils are nothing 
compared with the wholesail devastation sometimes made on the roots of 
this shrub by the larve of cockchafers, which in two years destroyed at 
Chenevieres sur Maine in France, 100,000 rose trees in M. Vibert’s nur- 
series, which he was forced to abandon. Reaumur has given the history 
of a fly (Merodon Narcissi) whose larva feeds in safety within the bulbs 
of the Narcissus, and destroys them; and also of another, though he neg- 
lects to describe the species, which tarnishes the gay parterre of the florist, 
whose delight is to observe the freaks of nature exhibited in the various 


 Reaum. ii. 337, 2 Westwood in Loudon’s Gard. Mag. Sept. 1837. 
3 Apis. **, c. 2. a. K. 


5 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 143 


many-colored streaks which diversify the blossom of the tulip, by de- 
vouring its bulbs..—Sedums, and other out-of-door plants in pots, are often 
greatly injured by having the upper part of their roots gnawed by the 
_larve of a beetle, Otiorhynchus sulcatus.°—Ray notices another insect 
mentioned by Swammerdam, probably Bibzo hortulana, which he calls 
the deadliest enemy of the flowers of the spring. He accuses it of des- 
poiling the gardens and fields of every blossom, and so extinguishing the 
hope of the year. But you must not take up a prejudice against an 
innocent creature, even under the warrant of such weighty authority ; for 
the insect which our great naturalist has arraigned as the author of such 
devastation is scarcely guilty, if it be at all a culprit, in the degree here 
alleged against it. As it is very numerous early in the year, it may per- 
haps discolor the vernal blossoms, but its mouth is furnished with no instru- 
ment to enable it to devour them. Lastly, to omit various other enemies 
of our parterres, as the wire-worm, &c., I may mention that universal 
pest, the earwig, against which the florist is obliged to use various pre- 
cautions to protect his choicest carnations, pinks, and dahlias from its 
ravages. 

In our stoves and greenhouses, the Aphides often reign triumphant ; 
for, if they be not discovered and destroyed when their numbers are small, 
their increase becomes so rapid, and their attack so indiscriminate, that 
every plant is covered and contaminated by them, beauty being converted 
into deformity, and objects before the most attractive now exciting only 
nausea and disgust. ‘The coccus (C. Hesperidum) also, which looks like 
an inanimate scale upon the bark, does considerable injury to the two prime 
ornaments of our conservatories, the orange and the myrtle; drawing off 
the sap by its pectoral rostrum, and thus depriving the plant of a portion 
of its nutriment, at the same time that it causes unpleasant sensations in 
the beholder from its resemblance to the pustule of some cutaneous disease. 
Similar injury is done by the mealy-bug (Coccus Adonidum L.) to many 
soft-leaved dicotyledonous plants, such as the coffee tree, Justicia, &c., as 
well as to Musa, Canna, &c.; and various species of scale insects, sepa- 
rated from Coccus by Bouché under the names of Aspidiotus Neri, Rose, 
&c., attack the oleanders, roses, bays, cactuses, &c.; while the red spider 
(Erythraus telarius), spinning its web over the under surface of the leaves, 
draws out their juices with its rostrum, and thus enfeebles, and, if unmo- 
lested, in the end, destroys them.* ‘ 

I must next conduct you from the garden into the orchard and fruitery ; 
and here you will find the same enemies still more busy and successful in 
their attemps to do us hurt. The strawberry, which is the earliest and at 
the same time most grateful of our fruits, enjoys also the privilege of 
being almost exempt from insect injury. A jumping weevil (Orchestes 
Fragaria) is said by Fabricius to inhabit this plant; but as the same 
species is abundant in this country upon the beech, the beauty of which 
it materially injures by the numberless holes which it pierces in the leaves, 
and has, I believe, never been taken upon the strawberry, it seems proba- 
ble that Smidt’s specimens might have fallen upon the latter from that 

1 Reaum. iv. 499. Bree vcs Uk RRM il lea ae 
2 Westwood in Loudon’s Gardener’s Mag. 1837. No. 85. 


3 Rai, Hist. Ins. Prolegom. xi. 
4 Kollar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 178—182. 


A 


144 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. Hf 


tree.! The only insect I have observed feeding upop this fruit is the ant, 
and the injury that it does is not material. The raspberry, the fruit of 
which arrives later at maturity, has more than one species of these animals 
for its foes. Its foliage sometimes suffers much from the attack of Melo- 
lontha horticola?, a little beetle related to the cock-chafer: when in flower, 
the footstalks of the blossom are occasionally eaten through by a more 
minute animal of the same order, Byturus tomentosus, which I once saw 
prove fatal to a whole crop, and of which the larva feeds upon the fruit 
itself; and bees frequently anticipate us, and, by sucking the fruit with 
their proboscis, spoil it for the table. Gooseberries and currants, those 
agreeable and useful fruits, a common object of cultivation both to poor 
and rich, have their share of enemies in this class. ‘The all-attacking 
Aphides do not pass over them, and the former especially are sometimes 
greatly injured by them; their excrement falling upon the berries renders 
them clammy and disgusting, and they soon turn quite black from it. In 
July, 1812, I saw a currant-bush miserably ravaged by a species of Coc- 
cus, very much resembling the Coccus of the vine. The eggs were of 
a beautiful pink, and enveloped in a large mass of cotton-like web, which 
could be drawn out to-a considerable length. Sir Joseph Banks once 
showed me a branch of the same shrub perforated down to the pith by the 
caterpillar of Aigeria tipuliformis : the diminished size of the fruit point- 
ing out, as he observed, where this enemy has been at work. In Germany, 
where, perhaps, this insect is more numerous, it is said not seldom to de- 
stroy the larger bushes of the red currant. The foliage of these fruits 
often suffers much from the black and white caterpillar of Abraxas grossu- 
lariata, and sometimes from those of Halias Vauaria; but their worst 
and most destructive enemy is that of a small saw-fly (Nematus Grossu- 
laire Dahlbom). This larva is of a green color, shagreened as it were 
with minute black tubercles, which it loses at its last moult. ‘The fly 
attaches its eggs in rows to the under side of the leaves. When first 
hatched, the little animals feed in society ; but having consumed the leaf 
on which they were born, they separate from each other, and the work of 
devastation proceeds with such rapidity, that frequently, where many 
families are produced on the same bush, nothing of the leaves is left but 
the veins, and all the fruit for that year is spoiled.* 


1 This kind of misnomer frequently occurs in entomological authors.—Thus, for instance, 
the Curculio (Rhynchites) Alliarie of Linné, feeds upon the hawthorn, and Curculio ( Crypte- 
rhynchus) Lapathi upon the willow (Curtis in Linn. rans. i. 86.) ; but as Alliarta is com- 
mon in hawthorn hedges, and docks often grow under willows, the mistake in question 
easily happened: when, however, such mistakes are discovered, the Trivial Name ought 
certainly to be altered. 

2 I consider this insect as the type of a new subgenus (Phyllopertha K. MS.), which con- 
nects those tribes of Melolontha F., that have a mesosternal prominence with those that have 
not. Of this subgenus I possess six species. It is clearly distinct from Anisoplia, under 
which De Jean arranges it. 3 Wiener Verzeich. 8vo. 29. 

4 Fabricius seems to have regarded the saw-fly that feeds upon the sallow (Nematus Cap- 
re@), not only as synonymous with that which feeds upon the oster, butalso with our little 
assailant of the gooseberry and currant. Yet it is very evident from Reaumur’s account, 
whose accuracy may be depended upon, that they are all distinct species. Fabricius’s de- 
scription of the fly agrees with the insect of the gooseberry, but that which he has given of 
the Jarva belongs to the animal inhabiting the sallow. Probably, confounding the two 
species, he described the imago from the insect of the former, and the larva (if he did not 
copy from Reaumur or Linné) from that of the latter. Linné was correct in regarding 
Reaumur’s three insects as distinct species, though he appears to be mistaken in referring 
to him under IV. flavus, as the saw-fly of the currant and gooseberry is not wholly yellow. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 145 


Upon the leaves of the cherry, which usually succeeds the gooseberry, 
in common with those of the pear and several other fruit-trees, the slimy 
larva of another saw-fly (Selandria Cerasi) makes its repast, yet without 
being the cause of any very material injury. But in North America, a 
second species nearly related to it, known there by the name of the slug- 
worm, has become prevalent to such a degree as to threaten the destruc- 
tion not only of the cherry, but also of the pear, quince, and plum. In 
1797, they were so numerous that the smaller trees were covered by them; 
and a breeze of air passing through those on which they abounded became 
charged with a very disagreeable and sickening odor. ‘Twenty or thirty 
were to be seen on a single leaf; and many trees, being quite stripped, 
were obliged to put forth fresh foliage, thus anticipating the supply of the 
succeeding year, and cutting off the prospect of fruit.’.—In some parts of 
Germany the cherry-tree has an enemy equally injurious. A splendid 
beetle of the weevil tribe (Rhynchites Bacchus) bores with its rostrum 
through the half-grown fruit into the soft stone, and there deposits an egg. 
The grub produced from it feeds upon the kernel, and, when about to 
become a pupa, gnaws its way through the cherry, and sometimes not one 
in a thousand escapes.?_ This insect is fortunately rare with us, and has 
usually been found upon the black thorn, The cherry-fly also (Tephritis 
Cerasi) provides a habitation for its maggot in the same fruit, which it 
invariably spoils.? 

The different varieties of the plum are every year more or less injured 
by Aphides; and a Coccus (C. Persice ?) sometimes so abounds upon 
them that every twig is thickly beaded with the red semiglobose bodies of 
the gravid females, whose progeny in spring exhaust the trees by pumping 
out the sap. In Germany, as we learn from M. Schmidberger, while the 
plum trees suffer from having their bark injured by two bark-boring beetles 
(Scolytus hemorrhous and S. Pruni), their fruit is destroyad by the larve 
of a beetle (Rhynchites cupreus), of a moth (Carpocapsa nigricana), and 
of a saw-fly (Tenthredo Morio).‘ 

The pear tree is liable to have its bark pierced in this country by the 
larve of Carpocapsa Weberana, which often lays the foundation of 
canker®; and in America by those of two beetles (Scolytus pyri, and 
Strobi Peck®) ; its sap is injuriously drawn off by Psylla piri ; its leaves 
have their parenchyma eaten away from under the cuticles, so as to give 
them a blistered appearance, by the larva of the pretty little moth Tinea 
Clerkella L.; and while the blossoms are rendered abortive by the attacks 
of the grub of a beetle (Anthonomos pyri Kollar), the fruit is caused to 
drop off prematurely and rot by the larve of not fewer than three minute 
tipulidan flies, (Sezara pyrt Schmidberger, Sciara Schmidbergeri KGllar, 
and Cecidomyia nigra Meigen’,) and also by that of a four small winged 
fly, observed by Mr. Knight, which would seem to be a saw-fly, and is 
probably the species which Reaumur saw enter the blossom of a pear 
before it was quite open, doubtless to deposit its eggs in the embryo fruit. 


1 Peck’s Nat. Hist. of the Slug-worm, 9. 

2 Trost Kleiner Beytrag. 38. 3 Reaum. ii. 477. 
4 Kollar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 237. 232, 268. 

® See Observations on this insect in Trans. of Hort. Soc. ii. 25. by W. Spence. 

6 Westwood, Mod. Classif. of Ins. i. 353. 

7 Kollar, ubi supr. 250, 289. 292. 


13 


146 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


He often found in young pears, on opening them, a larva of this genus.? 
A little moth likewise is mentioned by Mr. Forsyth"as very injurious to 
this tree.” 

But of all our fruits none is so useful and important as the apple, 
and none suffers more from insects, which according to Mr. Knight are a 
more frequent cause of the crops failing than frost. Here, as in the pear- 
trees, the bark, and consequently the whole tree, suffers from the larve of 
Carpocapsa Weberana, and of Tinea corticella L.,as well as of a Scoly- 
tus nearly related to S. destructor, but perhaps distinct, which I found 
infesting it in Guernsey in 1836; and in Austria the larva of another 
beetle (Trypodendron dispar) pierces into the heart of young healthy 
trees, and destroyed (M. Schmidberger) several of his stock.4 The sap 
is often injuriously drawn off by Psylla mali*; and by a minute Coccus, 
of which the female has the exact shape of a muscle shell (C. arborum 
linearis Geoffr.), and which Reaumur has accurately described and figur- 
ed.5 ‘This species so abounded in 1816 on an apple tree in my garden, 
that the whole bark was covered with it in every part; and I have since 
been informed by Joshua Haworth, jun. Esq., of Hull, that it equally 
infests other trees in the neighborhood. Even the fruit of a golden pippin 
which he sent me were thickly beset with it. But the insect which most 
injures our apple trees by drawing off their sap, and which has been known 
in this country only since the year 1787, is the apple-aphis, called by 
some the Coccus, and by others the American blight. 'This is a minute 
insect, covered with a long cotton-like wool transpiring from the pores of 
its body, which takes its station in the chinks and rugosities of the bark, 
where it increases abundantly, and, by constantly extracting the sap, 
causes ultimately the destruction of the tree. Whence this pest was first 
introduced is not certainly known. Sir Joseph Banks traced its origin to 
a nursery in Sloane Street ; and at first he was led to conclude that it had 
been imported with some appletrees from France. On writing, however, 
to gardeners in that country, he found it to be wholly unknown there. It 
was therefore, if not a native insect, most probably derived from North 
America, from whence apple trees had also been imported by the proprie- 
tor of that nursery. Whatever its origin, it spread rapidly. At first it 
was confined to the vicinity of the metropolis, where it destroyed thou- 
sands of trees. But it has since found its way into other parts of the 
kingdom, particularly into the cider counties ; and in 1810 so many per- 
ished from it in Gloucestershire, that, if some mode of destroying it were 
not discovered, it was feared the making of cider must be abandoned. 
Sir Joseph Banks long ago extirpated it from his own apple trees, by the 
simple method of taking off all the rugged and dead old bark, and then 
scrubbing the trunk and branches with a hard brush.® 


1 Reaum. ubi supr. 475. 2 On Fruit Trees, 271. 

3 KGllar, on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 256. 4 Ibid. 278. > Reaum, iv. 69. t. 5. f. 6,7. 

8 This Aphis is evidently the insect described in Illiger’s Magazin, i. 450. under the name 
of A. lanigera,as having done great injury to the apple-trees in the neighborhood of Bre- 
menin 1801. That itis an Aphis and no Coccus is clear from its oral rostrum and the wings of 
the male, of which Sir Joseph Banks had an admirable drawing by Mr. Bauer. On this 
Aphis see Forsyth, 265.; Monthly Mag. xxxii. 320.; and also for August, 1811.; and Sir 
Joseph Banks in the Horticultural Society’s Transactions, li. 162. Those Aphides that tran- 
spire a cottony excretion are now considered, as before stated, as belonging to a distinct 
genus, under the name of Lachnus, Illig.; Myzozyle, Blot; Eriosoma, Leach. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 147 


Even in the very commencement of their existence our choicest apple 
trees are attacked by insects; for the young grafts, as [ am informed by 
an intelligent friend, Mr. Scales, are frequently destroyed, sometimes many 
hundreds in one night, in the nurseries about London, by Curculio vastator 
Marsh. (Otiorhynchus notatus), one of the short-snouted weevils ; as are 
in the neighborhood of Warsaw the grafts of this and other fruit trees by a 
smaller weevil Polydrusus (Nemoicus) oblongus', which with us eats the 
leaves of both apple and pear trees. The blossoms, in common with 
those of the pear and cherry, are attacked by the figure-of-eight moth 
(Episema ceruleocephala), which Linné denominates the pest of Pomona ; 
and still more effectually by the grub of a reddish long-snouted weevil 
(Anthonomus pomorum), which eating both the blossom and organs of 
fructification precludes all hope of fruit. If this danger be escaped, and 
the fruit be set, it is then in Austria often destroyed by Rhynchites Bac- 
chus, the same splendid weevil which attacks the cherry; and Reaumur 
has given us the history of a species of moth common in this country 
(Carpocapsa pomonella), the caterpillar of which feeds in the centre of 
our apples, thus occasioning them to fall; as does also the larva of one of 
the saw-flies (Tenthredo testudinea), as observed by Mr. Westwood, and 
the first instance known of one of this tribe feeding in the interior of 
fruits.? 

Our more dainty and delicate fruits, at least such as are usually so ac- 
counted, the apricot, the peach, and the nectarine, originally of Asiatic 
origin, are not less subject to the empire of insects than the homelier 
natives of Europe. Certain Aphides form a convenient and sheltered 
habitation for themselves, by causing portions of the leaves to rise into 
hollow red convexities ; in these they reside, and, with their rostrum pump- 
ing out the sap, in time occasion them to curl up, and thus deform the 
tree and injure the’produce. ‘The fruit is attacked by various other enemies 
of this class, against which we find it not easy to secure it: wasps, earwigs, 
flies, wood-lice, and ants, which last communicate to it a disagreeable 
flavor, all share with us these ambrosial treasures; the first of them as it 
were opening the door, by making an incision in the rind, and letting in 
all the rest. The nucleus of the apricot is also sometimes inhabited by the 
caterpillar of a moth, which feeding on the kernel causes the fruit to fall 
prematurely.2 And much injury is done to this tree by the larva of a little 
moth (Ditula angustiorana), by devouring the young blossom-buds and 
tying the young shoots together with its silken thread, so as to stop their 
growth.* In this country, however, these fruits may be regarded as mere 
luxuries, and therefore are of slight consequence ; but in North America 
they constitute an important part of the general produce, at least the peach, 
serving both as food for swine, and furnishing by distillation a. spirit. The 
ravages committed upon them there by insects are so serious, that premiums 
have been offered for extirpating them. A species of weevil, perhaps a 
Rhynchites, enters the fruit when unripe, probably laying its eggs within 
the stone, and so destroys them. And two kinds of Zygena, by attacking 


1 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, viii. Bull. viii. 

2 Trans. Ent. Soc, Lond. iii. proc. xxxii. 

3 M. de la Hire in Reaum. ii. 478. 

* Westwood in Loudon's Gardener’s Mag. No. 94. Jan. 1838. 


148 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


the roots, do a still greater injury to the trees..—A Coccus, as it should 
seem from the description, imported about thirty years ago from the Mau- 
ritius, or else with the Constantia vine from the Cape of Good Hope, has 
destroyed nearly nine tenths of the peach trees in the Island of St. He- 
lena, where formerly they were so abundant, that, as in North America, 
the swine were fed with their fruit. Various means have been employed 
to destroy this plague, but hitherto without success.2—The imperial pine- 
apple, the glory of our stoves, and the most esteemed of the gifts of Pomona, 
cannot however precious, be defended from the injuries of a singular spe- 
cies of mite, before mentioned, the red Spider of gardeners, (Erythreus 
telarius), which covers it, and other stove plants, with a most delicate, but 
at the same time very pernicious web ; and the Coccus bromelia@ is often 
as great a pest, preying upon the leaves and young fruit beneath a white 
downy secretion.*—The olive-tree, so valuable to the inhabitants of the 
warmer regions of Europe, often nourishes in its berries the destructive 
maggot of a fly (Dacus olee) ; and the caterpillar of a little moth (Tinea 
oleella), which preys upon the kernel of the nucleus, occasions them to 
fall before they are ripe. The larve of two beetles, Hylesinus oletperda 
and Phloiotribus oleae, attack the bark and alburnum of the young branches ; 
another beetle, Otiorhynchus meridionalis Schon., devours the young 
shoots and leaves ; and the sap is injuriously abstracted by Coccus oleae, 
and by Psylla olee Fons.*, as well as by Thrips physapus, which in 'Tus- 
cany has of late years threatened the olive trees of some districts with 
destruction, by attacking the young leaves and buds.*—Every one who eats 
nuts knows that they are very often inhabited by a small white grub ; this 
is the offspring of a weevil (Balaninus nucum), remarkable for its long and 
slender rostrum, with which it perforates the shell when young and soft, 
and deposits an egg in the orifice. In France it sometimes happens, when 
the chestnuts promise an abundant crop, that the fruit falls before it comes 
to maturity, scarcely any remaining upon the trees. The caterpillar of a 
moth which eats into its interior is the cause of this disappointment.6 Of 
fruits the date has the hardest nucleus ; yet an insect of the same tribe 
with the above, that feeds upon its kernel, is armed with jaws sufficiently 
strong to perforate it, that it may make its escape when the time of its 
change is arrived, and assume the pupa between the stone and the flesh. ~ 
And another moth, the Pyralis brunnea, feeds on the pulp of the fruit, 
and there undergoes its metamorphosis.?_ The date is eaten also by a bee- 
tle which Hasselquist calls a Dermestes.-—Another foreign fruit, the tam- 
arind, has its stone, which is nearly as hard as that of the date, attacked by 
a weevil of the same genus as the corn-weevil of which, in the larva state, 
sometimes as many as forty are found in a single stone.? The pome- 


1 Dr. Smith Barton’s Letter in Philos. Magaz. xxii. 210.— William Davy, Esq. American 
Consu] of the port of Hull, long resident in the United States, informed me, that though he 
had abundance of peaches at his country-house, German Town, near Philadelphia, he could 
never succeed with the nectarine, the fruit constantly falling off perforated by the grub of 
some insect. 2 Descr. of the I. of St. Helena, 147. 

3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. Ixiv. ; and see also Westwood’s Obs. i. 206. 

4 M. Boyer de Fonscolombe in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ix. 101. 

5 Passerini, Alcuni Notizie, &c. 

6 Reaum. ii. 505. 7 Guérin-Méneville, Revue Zoolog. 1841, p. 246. 

8 Tbid. ii. 507. and Hasselquist’s Travels in the Levant, 428. 

® Christy, in Trans. Eat. Soc. Lond. i. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 149 


granate, in the East Indies, has its interior eaten by the caterpillar of the 
hair-streak butterfly (Thecla Isocrates), of whose economy Mr. Westwood 
has given so interesting an account.! 

In these last-named fruits, however, we have a far slighter interest than 
in another of our imported ones, the orange, of which, in 1841 (including 
lemons), we consumed upwards of 302,000 chests, paying a gross duty 
of 63,975/., and which may be regarded as the most valuable of the 
whole, combining a highly intrinsic excellence, with a price which brings 
it within the reach of all. It appears, however, from the interesting and 
important facts stated by W. S. MacLeay, Esq. that we might have 
oranges still cheaper, were it not for a little fly (Ceratitis citriperda), 
which lays its eggs in them before their shipment from the Azores, and 
the grubs subsequently disclosed often so greatly injure them, that the 
orange merchants calculate on losing one third of their average importa- 
tions, and of course reimburse themselves by a proportionate advance of 
the price to the consumers.” 

One of the most delicious, and at the same time most useful, of all our 
fruits is the grape: to this, as you know, we are indebted for our raisins, 
for our currants, for our wine, and for our brandy ; you cannot therefore 
but feel interested in its history, and desire to be informed, whether, like 
those before enumerated, this choice gift of Heaven, whose produce 
‘‘cheereth God and man’,’” must also be the prey of insects. ‘There is 
a singular beetle, common in Hungary (Lethrus cephalotes), which gnaws 
off the young shoots of the vine, and drags them backward into its bur- 
row, where it feeds upon them: on this account the country people wage 
continual war with it, destroying vast numbers.* Five other beetles also 
attack this noble plant: three of them, mentioned by French authors, 
(Rhynchites, Bacchus, Eumolpus vitis, and Haltica oleracea), devour the 
young shoots, the foliage and the footstalks of the fruit, so that the latter 
is prevented from coming to maturity®; a fourth (C. corruptor Host,) by 
a German, which seems closely allied to Otsorhynchus notatus, before 
mentioned, if it be not the same insect, which destroys the young vines, 
often killing them the first year, and is accounted so terrible an enemy to 
them, that not only the animals, but even their eggs, are searched for and 
destroyed, and to forward this work people often call in the assistance of 
their neighbors.6 And a fifth, Otiorhynchus sulcatus, also occasionally 
does considerable injury to the vine in this country, by gnawing off the 
young shoots. Various lepidopterous larve are still more injurious to the 
vine. In the Crimea the small caterpillar of a Procris or Ino (genera 
separated from Sphinx L.), related to I. statices, is a most destructive 


1 Christy, in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 1. 

2 Zoological Journ. iv. 475. This fly, which Dr. Heineken states is common in Madeira, 
and that he has also hatched it from lemons and peaches ( Zool. Journ. v. 199.), seems to be 
the same species with Petalophora ( Trypeta Wied.), capitata Macq. ( Dipteres, ii. 454.), so 
named from the two singular clavate processes between the eyes of the male. It may be 
easily obtained from decaying oranges, on the outside of which the grub assumes the pupa 
state. 

3 That is, “ High and Low,” Judges, ix. 13. 4 Sturm, Deutschland’s Fauna, i. 5. 

5 Latreille, Hest. Nat. xi. 66. 331.—According to Kéllar (163.), however, in Austria, it 
is R. betuleti, and not R. Bacchus, which is injurious to the vines ; and the case is the same 
according to M. Silbermann, as to the vines of Alsatia and the banks of the Rhine. 

§ Host in Jacquin. Collect. iii. 297. 

7 Westwood in Loudon’s Gardener’s Mag. for April, 1837. 


13* 


150 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


enemy. As soon as the buds open in the spring, it eas its way into them, 
especially the fruit buds, and devours the germ of the grape. Two or 
three of these caterpillars will so injure a vine, by creeping from one 
germ to another, that it will bear no fruit nor produce a single regular 
shoot the succeeding year.! In Italy, especially in Piedmont and Tus- 
cany, the vines are often devasted by the larva of another species of the 
same genus, Procris ampelophaga Passerini?; in Germany a different 
species does great injury to the young branches, preventing their expan- 
sion by the webs in which it involves them*®; and a fourth (Tortrix fas- 
ciana) makes the grapes themselves its food: a similar insect is alluded to 
in the threat contained in Deuteronomy*, while in France it is the eater- 
pillar of a small moth, the Tortrix vitana Bosc. (Pyralis vitana and Pil- 
lerana Fab., P. danticana Walck.), which does the most injury by gnaw- 
ing the footstalk of the leaves and branches of grapes”, and of late years 
to such an extent in the Maconnais and other districts, that the attention 
of the government having been called to the mischief, under their direc- 
tion my lamented friend Professor Audouin was, at the period of his un- 
timely death, which Entomology so deeply deplores, engaged on a fine 
work embracing a complete history of the insect, with figures of it in 
every state, and an account of the best means of destroying it. The 
worst pest of the vine in this country is its Coccus (C. vitis). This ani- 
mal, which fortunately is not sufficiently hardy to endure the common 
temperature of our atmosphere, sometimes so abounds upon those that are 
cultivated in stoves and greenhouses, that their stems seem quite covered 
with little locks of white cotton ; which appearance is caused by a fila- 
mentous secretion transpiring through the skin of the animal, in which 
they envelop their eggs. Where they prevail they do great injury to the 
plant by subtracting the sap from its foliage and fruit, and causing it to 
bleed®; and, to close the list without extending it by alluding with M. 
Walckenaer to the insects only occasionally injurious to the vine, you are 
perfectly aware of the eagerness with which wasps, flies, and other insects, 
attack the grapes when ripe, often leaving nothing but the mere skin for 
their lordly proprietor. 

There are some of these creatures that attack indiscriminately all fruit- 
trees. One of these is the Cicada septemdecim (so called because, accord- 
ing to Kalm, it appears only once in seventeen years’). The female ovi- 
posits in the pith of the twigs of trees, where the grubs are hatched, and 
do infinite damage both to fruit and forest-trees.® Birds greedily devour 
them ; and a curious fact is mentioned by Dr. Harlan of Philadelphia 
(who confirms their septemdecenary appearance), that young fowls which 
eat them lay eggs with colorless yolks.® Another, the caterpillar of the 
butterfly of the hawthorn (Pieris crategi), which, in 1791, in some parts 


1 Pallas’s Travels in S. Russia, ii. 241, 

2 Memoria sopra due Specie d’ in Setti noscivi, &ce. 

3 Jacquin. Collect, ii. 97. 4 Deut. xxviii. 39. 

§ Walckenaer in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, iv.687.; Guérin, art. Pyrale, Dict. Pittoresque 
d’ Hist. Nat. pp. 409—416. 

6 According to M. Walckenaer, in his elaborate and learned Essay on the Insects injuri- 
ous to the Vine (Ann. Suc. Ent. de France, iv. 687.), it is the Coccus adonidum which is in- 
jurious to vines in hot-houses in France, while the Coccus vitis attacks those in the open air. 

7 Travels, ii. 6. 8 Collinson in Philos. Trans. liv. x. 65. 

9 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. xxx. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 151 


of Germany, stripped the fruit-trees in general of their foliage.! In 
France also, in 1731 and 1732, that of a moth, which seems related to 
the brown-tail moth (Porthesia auriflua), whose history has been given 
by the late Mr. Curtis, was so numerous as to occasion a general alarm. 
The oaks, elms, and white-thorn hedges looked as if some burning wind 
had passed over them and dried up their leaves ; for, the insect devouring 
only one surface of them, that which is left becomes brown and dry. 
They also laid waste the fruit-trees, and even devoured the fruit ; so that 
the parliament published an edict to compel people to collect and destroy 
them; but this would in a great measure have been ineffectual, had not 
some cold rains fallen, which so completely annihilated them, that it was 
difficult to meet with a single individual. In Germany, according to M. 
Schmidberger, the larve of the following moths, Porthesia chrysorrhea, 
Clistocampa neustria, Hypogymna dispar, Episema ceruleocephala, Ypono- 
meuta padella, and especially Chetmatobia brumata, which he calls the 
most ruinous of the whole, are all more or less injurious to fruit trees 
generally.2 In the north of France, as we learn from Mr. Westwood, 
one of these caterpillars, that of the small ermine moth (Yponomeuta 
padella) is often so numerous as to defoliate the apple trees by the road 
sides for miles. Three species of beetles also, Rhynchites alliaria, which 
in the larva state bores into the young shoots, and Nemoicus oblongus and 
Phyllopertha horticola, which attack the leaves as perfect insects, join 
their lepidopterous brethren in Germany in a general assault on fruit trees. 

If we quit the orchard and fruit-garden for a walk in our plantations 
and groves, we shall still be forced to witness the sad effects of insect 
devastation ; and when we see, as sometimes happens, the hedges and trees 
entirely deprived of their foliage, and ourselves of the shade we love from 
the fervid beam of the noonday sun; when the singing birds have deserted 
them ; and all their music, which has so often enchanted us by its melody, 
variety, and sweetness, has ceased—we shall be tempted in our hearts to 
wish the whole insect race was blotted from the page of creation. Nume- 
rous are the agents employed in this work of destruction. Amongst the 
beetles, various cockchafers (Melolontha vulgaris, Amphimalla solstitialis, 
and Phyllopertha horticola) in their perfect state act as conspicuous a part 
in injuring the trees, as their grubs do in destroying the herbage. Besides 
the leaves of fruit-trees, they devour those of the sycamore, the lime, the 
beech, the willow, and the elm. They are sometimes, especially the com- 
mon one, astonishingly numerous. Mouffet relates, (but one would think 
that there must be some mistake in the date, since they are never so early 
in their appearance,) that on the 24th of February, 1574, such a number 
of them fell into the river Severn as to stop the wheels of the water- 
mills.° It is also recorded in the Philosophical Transactions, that in 1688 
they filled the hedges and trees of part of the county of Galway in such 
infinite numbers, as to cling to each other in clusters like bees when they 
swarm ; on the wing they darkened the air, and produced a sound like 
that of distant drums. When they were feeding, the noise of their jaws 
might be mistaken for the sawing of timber. Travelers and people abroad 


1 Rosel, I. ii. 15. 2 Reaum. ii. 122. 
3 Kollar, on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 190.—229, 
4 Loudon’s Gardener’s Mag. Oct. 1837, 5 Mouffet, 160. 


152 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


were very much annoyed by their continual flying in, their faces; and in 
a short time the leaves of all the trees for some miles round were so totally 
consumed by them, that at midsummer the country wore the aspect of the 
depth of winter.! 

But the criminals to whom it is principally owing that our groves are 
sometimes stripped of the green robe of summer are the various tribes of 
Lepidoptera, especially the nightfliers or moths, myriads of whose cater- 
pillars, in certain seasons, despoil whole districts of their beauty, and our 
walks of all their pleasure. Some of these, like the cockchafers, or the 
caterpillars of Clisiocampa neustria, Porthesia chrysorrhea, &c. before 
mentioned, as attacking most fruit-trees, are also general feeders on forest 
trees, though some of the species usually prefer particular kinds when 
accessible. Thus in 1731 the oaks of France were terribly devastated 
by the larva of Hypogymna dispar? ; as are often those of Germany by 
that of Cnethocampa processtonea; and those of England by the leaf- 
rolling caterpillar of the pretty little green moth Tortrix viridana. Our 
elms have their leaves frequently drilled into holes by the little jumping 
weevil, Orchestes fagi, and the beech, alder, &c., are partially disfigured 
by other species of this saltatorial tribe. In France, however, the elms 
sustain a much more serious injury from the larva of another larger beetle 
(Galleruca calmariensis), the leaves being sometimes so covered with them, 
and rendered so brown, as to have the appearance of having been struck 
by lightning, as was the case with the fine promenades of Rouen, when I 
was there in 1836. Cheimatobia brumata is likewise a fearful enemy to 
the foliage of almost every kind of tree.? The woods in certain provinces 
of North America are in some years entirely stripped by the caterpillar 
of another moth, which eats all kinds of leaves. This happening at a 
time of the year when the lreat is most excessive, is attended by fatal con- 
sequences ; for, being deprived of the shelter of their foliage, whole for- 
ests are sometimes entirely dried up and ruined.4 The brown tail moth, 
before alluded to, which occasionally bares our hawthorn hedges, has been 
rendered famous by the alarm it caused to the inhabitants of the vicinity 


1 Philos. Trans. xix. 741. 

2 Reaum. i. 387. These larvae were so extremely numerous in 1826 on the lines of the 
Allé Verte at Brussels, that many of the trees of that noble avenue, though of great age, 
were nearly deprived of their leaves, and afforded little of the shade which the unusual 
heat of the summer so urgently required. The moths which in autumn proceeded from 
them, when in motion towards night, swarmed like bees, and subsequently on the trunk of 
every tree might be seen scores of females depositing their down-covered patch of eggs. 
In the Park they were also very abundant; and it may be safely asserted that if one half 
of the eggs deposited were to be hatched, in 1827 scarcely a leaf would remain in either of 
these favorite places of public resort. Happily, however, this calamity was prevented by 
natural means. Of the vast number of patches of eggs which I saw on almost every tree 
in the park about the end of September, I could two months afterwards, to my no small 
surprise, discover scarcely one, though the singularity of the fact made me examine closely. 
For their disappearance I have no doubt the inhabitants of Brussels are indebted to the tit- 
mouse (Parus), the tree-creeper (Certhia familiaris), and other small birds known to derive 

art of their food from the eggs of insects, and which abound in the Park, where they may 

e often seen running up and down the trunks of the trees, at once providing their own 
food and rendering a service to man, which all his powers would be inadequate completely 
to effect. 

Reaumur (ii. 106.) in certain seasons found these patches of eggs so numerous, that in 
the Bois de Boulogne there was scarcely an oak, the under side of the branches of which 
were not covered by them for an extent of seven or eight feet. He informs us that the eggs 
are not hatched till the following spring. 

3 De Geer, ii. 452. 4 Kalm’s Travels, ii. 7. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 153 


of the metropolis in 1782, when rewards were offered for collecting the 
caterpillars, and the churchwardens and overseers of the parishes attended 
to see them burnt by bushels. You may have observed perhaps in some 
cabinets of foreign insects an ant, the head of which is very large in pro- 
portion to the size of its body, with a piece of leaf in its mouth many 
times bigger than itself. These ants, called in Tobago parasol ants (Atta 
cephalotes), cut circular pieces out of the leaves of various trees and 
plants, which they carry in their jaws to their nests, and they will strip a 
‘ tree of its leaves in a night, a circumstance which has been confirmed to 
me by Captain Hancock.! Stedman mentions another very large ant, 
being at least an inch in length, which has the same instinct. It was a 
pleasant spectacle, he observes, to behold this army of ants marching con- 
stantly in the same direction, and each individual with its bit of green leaf 
in its mouth.” The insects injurious to deciduous trees mostly leave the 
fir and pine tribes untouched ; but these, on the other hand, are subject to 
have their foliage ravaged by a great variety of insect enemies peculiar to 
themselves, to some extent in this country, but far more on the Continent, 
as by the larve of various moths (Dendrolimus pini, Psilura monacha, 
Achatia piniperda, Bupalus piniarius, Orthotenia turionana and resinella, 
&c.) ; and of not fewer than three species of saw-fly (Lophyrus pini and 
rufus and Pamphilius erythrocephala).? The injury thus caused to trees 
by insects is not confined to the mere loss of their leaves for one season ; 
for it occasions them to draw upon the funds of another, by sending forth 
premature shoots and making gems unfold, that, in the ordinary course, 
would not have put forth their foliage till the following year. 

Other insects, though they do not entirely-devour the leaves of trees 
and plants, yet considerably diminish their beauty. Thus, for instance, 
sometimes the subcutaneous larve undermine them, when the leaf exhibits 
the whole course of their labyrinth in a pallid, tortuous, gradually dilating 
line—at others, the Tortrices disfigure them by rolling them up, or the 
leaf-cutter bees by taking a piece out of them, or certain Tinee again by 
eating their under surface, and so causing them to wither either partially 
or totally. You have doubtless observed what is called the honey-dew 
upon the maple and other trees, concerning which the learned Roman nat- 
uralist Pliny gravely hesitates whether he shall call it the sweat of the 
heavens, the saliva of the stars, or a liquid produced by the purgation of 
the air!!4 Perhaps you may not be aware that it is a secretion of Aphi- 
des, whose excrement has the privilege of emulating sugar and honey in 
sweetness and purity. It however often tarnishes the lustre of those trees 
in which these insects are numerous, and is the lure that attracts the 
swarms of ants which you may often see traveling up and down the trunk 
of the oak and other trees.° The larch in particular is inhabited by an 


1 The same intelligent gentleman related to me, that a person having taken some land 
at Bahia in the Brazils, he was compelled by these ants, which were so numerous as to 
render every effort to destroy them ineffectual, to relinquish the occupation of it. Their 
nests were excavated to the astonishing depth of fourteen feet. Merian, Insect. Sur. 18. 
Smeathman on Termites, Phil. Trans. 1xxi. 39. note 35. 

* Stedman, ii. 142. 3 K6llar, on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &e. 323—356. 

4 Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 12. 

5 It is contended by some observers, that besides the honey-dew caused by Aphides, there 
is another arising solely from a morbid exudation of the saccharine juices of trees. This 
is certainly possible ; but I may observe, that in the course of more than thirty years which 


154 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


Aphis transpiring a waxy substance like filaments of otton: this is some- 
times so infinitely multiplied upon it as to whiten the whole tree, which 
often perishes in consequence of its attack. The beech is infested by a 
similar one. Some animals also of this genus inhabiting the poplar, elm, 
lime, and willow, reside in galls they have produced, that disfigure the 
leaves or their footstalks. Perhaps those resembling fruit, or flowers, or 
moss, produced by the Aplis of the fir (Aphis abietis), the different 
species of gall-gnats (Cectdomyia), or occasioned by the puncture and 
oviposition of the various kinds of gall-flies (Cynips), may be regarded 
rather as an ornament than as an injury to a tree or shrub; yet when too 
numerous they must deprive it of its proper nutriment, and so occasion 
some defect. And probably the enormous wens, and other monstrosities 
and deformities observable in trees, may have been originally produced by 
the bite or incision of insects. 

Besides exterior insect enemies, living trees are liable to the ravages of 
many that are interior. These interior feeders may be divided into two 
great classes—those which bore into the heart and substance of the wood, 
and those which feed upon the inner bark, with the adjoining alburnum 
or sap-wood. Amongst the former the larva of a large weevil (Cryptor- 
hynchus lapathi) bores into the wood of the willow and sallow, which 
thus in time often become so hollow as to be easily blown down.t The 
Stag-beetle tribe, or Lucanide, have a similar appetite; but the most 
extensive family of timber-borers are the Capricorn beetles*, including the 
Fabriciarn genera of Prionus, Cerambyx, Lamia, Stenocorus, Leptura, 
Rhagium, Gnoma, Saperda, Callidium’, and Clytus. The larva of these, 
as soon as hatched leaves its first station between the bark and wood, 
and begins to make its way into the solid timber (some of them plunging 
even into the iron heart of the oak), where it eats for itself fatuous paths, 
at its first starting perhaps not bigger than a pin’s head, but gradually 
increasing in dimensions as the animal increases in magnitude, till it attains 
in some instances toa diameter of one or two inches. Only conceive 
what havoc the grub of the vast Prionus giganteus must make in a beam ! 
Percival is probably speaking of this beetle, when, in his account of 
Ceylon, he tells us, “There is an insect found here which resembles an 
I have attended to this subject (seven of them spent on the Continent, where the greater 
heat might be supposed likely to cause morbid vegetable action,) I have never met with any 
honey-dew which did not seem to me very clearly referable to Aphides as its origin; though, 
from the circumstance of their having been all swept away by the attacks of their natural ene- 
mies and other causes, while their saccharine excretion remains on the leaves for weeks in 
a dry time, and after being moistened by a slight dew may have every appearance of being 
a recent morbid exudation, and may, even after very copious dews, fall on the ground, a 
casual observer may often be plausibly led to a different conclusion. 

1 Lewin in Zinn. Trans. iii. 1. Curtis in ditto, i, 86. 

2 See Kirby in Zinn. Trans. v. 250,—More than a hundred species of the Capricorn 


tribe, many of them nondescripts, were collected near Rio de Janeiro by Captain Hancock 
of the Foudroyant. 


3 The larva of a Callidium (which Dr. Leach has discovered to be C. bajulum) sometimes 
does material injury to the wood-work of the roofs of houses in London, piercing in every 
direction the fir-rafiers (in which it most probably took up its residence while they were 
growing as trees), and, when arrived at the perfect state, making its way out even through 
sheets of Jead one sixth of an inch thick, when they happen to have been nailed upon the 
rafter in which it has assumed its final metamorphosis. I am indebted to the kindness of 
Sir Joseph Banks for a specimen of such a sheet of lead, which, though only eight inches 
long and four broad, is thus pierced with twelve oval holes, of some of which the longest 
diameter is a quarter of an inch! Mr. Charles Miller first discovered lead in the stomach 
of the larva of this insect. , 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 155 


immense overgrown beetle. It is called by us a carpenter, from its boring 
large holes in timber, of a regular form, and to the depth of several feet, in 
which, when finished, it takes up its habitation.”! Seeing the perfect 
insect come out of these holes, an unentomological observer would natu- 
rally conclude that the beetle he saw had formed it, and lived in it; but, 
doubtless, the whole was the work of the grub. Of all the Coleopterous 
genera there is none the species of which are generally so rich, resplendent, 
and beautiful, as those of Buprestis: these likewise, in their first state, 
there is abundant reason to believe, derive their nutriment from the produce 
of the forest, in which they sometimes remain for many years before they 
assume their perfect state, and appear in their full splendor, as if nature 
required more time than usual to decorate these lovely insects. We learn 
from Mr. Marsham that the grub of B. splendida was ascertained to 
have existed in the wood of a deal table more than twenty years.” 
Another tribe of internal wood-borers belong to the genus Sirex of the 
order Hymenoptera. Mr. Stephens informs me that the fir-trees in a 
plantation of Mr. Foljambe’s, in Yorkshire, were destroyed by the larve 
of Strex gigas ; while those of another, belonging to the same gentleman, 
in Wiltshire, met with a similar fate from the attacks of Strex juvencus. 
In proof of the ravages made by this last insect, Mr. Raddon exhibited 
to the Entomological Society a portion of the wood of a fir-tree from 
Bewdley Forest, Worcestershire, of which twenty feet of its length was 
so perforated by its larve as to be only fit for fire-wood ; and being placed 
in an outhouse five or six of the perfect insects came out every morning 
for several weeks. When fir-trees thus attacked are cut down, it often 
happens that the larve of the species of Svrex inhabiting them have not 
attained their full growth at the time the wood has been employed as the 
joists or planks for floors, out of which the perfect insect, even years after, 
emerge, to the no small surprise and even alarm of the inmates. An 
instance of this, where several specimens of S. gigas were seen to come 
out of the floor of a nursery in a gentleman’s house, to the great discom- 
fiture both of nurse and children, is related by Mr. Marsham, on the 
authority of Sir Joseph Banks*; and a similar circumstancs, stated by 
Mr. Ingpen, occurred in the house of a gentleman at Henlow, Bedford- 
shire, from the joists of the floors of which whole swarms, literally ‘ thou- 
sands,’ of Sirev duplex Shuckard®, emerged from innumerable holes, 
large enough to admit a small pencil-case, causing great terror to the 
occupants. As the house had been built about three years (the joists of 
British timber), there could be no doubt of the larve having been more 
than that time in arriving at their perfect state.6 Amongst the most for- 
midable wood-borers with us is the larva of the great goat-moth (Cossus 
ligniperda’), which attacks willows, poplars and occasionally even elms 
. and oaks ; and from its large size, and living above two years in the larva 
state, the holes which it makes are a great deduction from the value of the 
tree, even if it be not entirely destroyed. The larve of Zeuzera esculi, 


2 po 3lo: * Linn. Trans. x. 399. 

3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. 1xxxv. 4 Linn. Trans. x. 403. 

5 This species inhabits the Spruce-fir ( Pinus nigra).—Shuckard in Loudon’s Mag. of Nat. 
Hist. 1837, p. 632. 

8 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc, 1xxxii. ; and iii. proc. ii. 

7 Curtis, Brit, Ent. t. 60. 


156 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


though much smaller, has similar habits, and is injyrious by boring into 
apple, pear, and walnut trees. 

The insects which attack the bark of trees mostly belong to the family 
of Scolytide Westwood (including the genera Scolytus, Hylesinus, Hylur- 
gus, Tomicus, &c.); a numerous tribe of beetles, the larve of which, 
after being hatched from the eggs deposited by the parent beetle, excavate 
in the substance of the inner bark, and partly also in the adjoining albur- 
num or sap-wood, laterel parallel channels more or less sinuous, proceeding 
on each side from a central one (that in which the eggs were placed), and 
thus giving to the under side of the detached bark and exposed alburnum 
that pinnated labyrinthine appearance, and fancied resemblance to letters, 
which made Linné affix to one of these insects, to be presently alluded 
to, the trivial name of Typographus. When in small numbers these 
larvee may do no great injury ; but where they abound, as they often do, 
by interrupting the course of the latex, or descending sap, and admitting 
wet between the bark and wood, decay speedily ensues, and the tree per- 
ishes. Almost every kind of tree is liable to the assaults of one or more 
species of this tribe of insects. Even fruit-trees, as the apple, plum, &c., 
have each their Scolytus ; and at Rouen I found a species, I believe 
undescribed, which feeds on the mountain ash. It is to our large forest 
trees, however, that they are most injurious. Thus the common ash is 
assailed by Hylesinus fraxini, the pinnated labyrinths of whose larve you 
can hardly fail to observe on the first piece of loose bark you detach from 
the rough-split posts and rails made of this wood ; while the bark-borer 
of the oak is a small beetle af an allied genus, Scolytus pygmaeus, which 
with us does no great harm, but so abounded of late years in the Bois de 
Vincennes, near Paris, that 40,000 trees were killed by it; and many of 
the finest elms in St. James’s Park and Kensington Gardens!, as well as 
in the promenades of various cities in the north of France, have fallen 
victims to another of this tribe, Scolytus destructor, whose trivial name 
well characterizes the frequency and severity of its ravages.” 


—E 


1 MacLeay in Edin. Phil. Journ. xi, 123. 

® While residing at Brussels in the spring of 1836, having pointed out to Dr. George, 
Professor of Botany at the University, that many of the elms in the park were infested with 
ihis insect, and that there was eminent risk of this noble promenade, which consists almost 
wholly of elms, being destroyed by it, he brought the subject under the notice of the bur- 
gomaster and municipal council, who very wisely had the diseased trees cut down, as well 
as the many much younger but equally infested trees of the Boulevards, and the bark of 
the whole peeled off and carefully burnt. [ afterwards found, in a tour along the north 
coast of France through Normandy, &c.. that the elms in the promenades (almost always 
formed of this tree), in all the large towns, were in a course of rapid destruction by this 
same Scolytus destructor, particularly at Calais, Boulogne, Rouen, Havre, and Caen; and 
numerous observations convinced me that the general opinion that these insects attack only 
those trees which are previously diseased from natural decay is altogether erroneous, and 
that Professor Audouin’s discovery is as important and correct as novel—namely, that 
though it is quite true that the female Scolyti never lay their eggs except in trees which are 
in a declining state ; yet it is equally certain that the healthiest elms, where Sco/yti abound, 
are constantly brought into this languishing state by the attacks of the males, or, as M. 
Audouin conceives, of both sexes (see remarks on this point by W. Spence in Trans. Ent. 
Soc. Lond. ii. proc. xlv.), upon the bark for food ; so that in consequence of the loss of 
sap from the numerous holes which they gnaw. and the subsequent mischief from the rain 
penetrating into them, the trees are soon brought into that unhealthy condition which the 
instinet of the female requires to induce her to lay her eggs in them. (Spence in Trans. 
Ent. Soc. Lond. ii, proc. xiii. Xv. Xx. Xxv.; Audouin in Ann. Ent. Soc. de France. Bull. Jan. 
4, 1837; Silbermann, Rev. Entom. iv. 115., where Dr. Ratzeburg is quoted as stating that 
the large weevil ( Pissodes notatus) in like manner attacks the bark of young pines with its 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 157 


It would occupy too much space to notice in detail all the bark-boring 
beetles which attack the various species of pine and fir-trees, which are 
very numerous, comprising Tomicus pinastri, Laricis micrographus, typo- 
graphus, and chalcographus, (which J found in 1837, in the larva, pupa, and 


trunk, and thus renders the trees unhealthy before the female deposits her eggs in them.) 
For a further description of the mischief done by Scolytus destructor, and the means of pe- 
venting its extension, see a communication by W. S. under the article U/mus, in Mr, Lou- 
don’s Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum ; to which admirable work the reader is also 
referred for more complete details than could be here given in the valuable contributions by 
Mr. Westwood relative to insects injurious to this and other species of forest-trees. 

It may be here mentioned, though somewhat out of place, for the purpose of drawing 
the attention of Entomologists to a new tribe of insect-parasites of which no account ap- 
pears to have been given in books, that in examining closely the pup of Scolytus destructor 
at Brussels, I found them lined in different parts of their external surface, but especially 
on the throat and about the cases of the elytra, with numerous transparent eel-shaped 
vermicles, not easily visible to the naked eye from their small size, being not more than 
one eighth or one tenth of a line in length, but perceptible through a pocket lens, especially 
when exposure to the air or the warm breath had made them elevate their tails (or heads, 
whichever they may be), a movement which sometimes takes place speedily, but at others 
only after a considerable examination, when they present the appearance of so many ani- 
mated hairs twisting and curling themselves in various directions. These vermicles, under 
M. Wesmael’s powerful compound microscope, with which he was so good as to assist me 
in examining them, exhibit not the slightest trace either of mouth or other external organ, 
nor of intestines, nor of internal vessels of any kind, which. if any such existed, might be 
easily seen through their transparent skin and body. This absence of all appearance of 
external and internal organs (the inside of the body seeming filled with granular mole- 
cules), added to their shape, which is filiform and very slender, sharply attenuated at each 
extremity, and their hyaline color, with very indistinct traces under a high magnifying 
power of about twenty segments, each as long as broad, are all the characters they afford. 
These characters, or rather negation of characters, might perhaps suffice to bring these 
vermicles under the genus Vibrio as formerly extended by Miller and Bory de St. Vincent, 
(to which, from their resemblance to the so called vinegar eels, Vibrio anguilla, 1 at first 
referred them,) but scarcely as it has been recently restricted by Ehrenberg, especially as 
all his species of this genus ( Vibrio) reside in water. From their connection with an ani- 
mal, they might be regarded as referable to the Oxyuri, were it not that neither my own nor 
M. Wesmael’s close examination could ever discover any trace of their existence in the 
interior of either the larva, pupa, or imagoof Scolytus. Their wholly exterior habitat seems 
also to exclude them from coming under Professor Owen’s genus Trichina, of his group 
Protelmintha, which, from its shape and simplicity of structure, might possibly include 
them, but which inhabits the cellular tissue between the muscular fibres, enclosed in a cyst 
in which it lies coiled up. Leaving it to future examination to decide the true genus and 
relations of these vermicles, I shall here merely observe, in addition to what has been above 
said, that I have found them upon a large proportion of the pupz of Scolytus destructor, and 
occasionally on some of the larve in an advanced stage of growth, and also on the pupze 
of Hylesinus frazini ; and in such distant localities, and at such different periods of the 
year, that 1 am persuaded that their occurrence was not accidental, but that they are true 
external parasites, of the family of Scolytid@ in the pupa (and partly in the larva) state, in 
which, however, they do not seem materially to injure them, nor prevent them from becom- 
ing perfect insects. (See Spence in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. xv.) 

Since writing the note above referred to upon Scolytus destructor, I have seen, in passing 
through Paris to Italy, so striking an instance of the way in which the little beetle to which 
it refers has revenged the neglect and contempt thrown upon its class by destroying in a 
great degree the effect of one of the most vaunted and costly productions of modern archi- 
tecture, that the fact may be worth recording as an instructive warning forthe future. The 
avenue of elms connecting the Place dela Concorde and Champs Elysées with the Barriére 
de l’Etoile leading to Neuilly, St. Germains, &c. has always been described as the most 
magnificent approach to Paris, and was on that account selected by Napoleon for the entrée 
of his new empress Marie-Louise, and as the site, at its most elevated point, of the “ Arc 
de Triomphe,” commemorating his victories and companions in arms, of which he laid the 
foundations, but which has only recently been completed at a vast expense. It is needless 
to point out how essentially the effect of this splendid monument of art must depend upon 
the size, health, and beauty of the lines of trees connecting it with those which occupy the 
Champs Elysées and garden of the Tuilleries ; yet at this time (September 10, 1842) there 
are lying from twenty to thirty of their finest elms very lately cut down, in consequence of 
having died from the attacks of Scolyti ; and as‘many others have been previously removed 
and replaced by young trees, and the full-grown ones offer, from their dead tops, the nume- 
rous holes in their bark, and the oozing sap, ample proof that their pigmy but effective 


14 


158 . INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


imago states, in the bark of Norway fir masts imported to Southampton,) Hy- 
lurgus piniperda, as well as two large weevils, Pissddes notatus and Pini, 
which have similar habits, &c. &c.; and I will conclude the list with 
stating as a sample of the whole the ravages committed by one of the 
tribe, Tomicus typographus,.in Germany, where it sometimes attacks the 
inner bark in such vast numbers, 80,000 being sometimes found in a single 
tree, that it is infinitely more noxious than any of those that bore into the 
wood ; and such is its vitality, that though the bark be battered and the 
tree plunged into water or laid upon the ice or snow, it remains alive and 
unhurt. The leaves of the trees infested by these insects first become 
yellow ; the trees themselves then die at the top, and soon entirely perish. 
Their ravages have long been known in Germany under the name of 
Wurm trokniss (decay caused by worms) ; and in the old liturgies of that 
country the animal itself is formerly mentioned under its vulgar appella- 
tion, “The Turk.” This pest was particularly prevalent, and caused 
incalculable mischief about the year 1665. In the beginning of the last 
century it again showed itself in the Hartz forests—it re-appeared in 
1757, redoubled its injuries in 1769, and arrived at its height in 1783, 
when the number of trees destroyed by it in the above forests alone was 
calculated at a million and a half, and the inhabitants were threatened 
with a total suspension of the working of their mines, and consequent 
ruin. ,At this period these T'omici, when arrived at their perfect state, 
migrated in swarms like bees into Suabia and Franconia. At length, 
between the years 1784 and 1789, in consequence of a succession of 
cold and moist seasons, the numbers of this scourge were sensibly dimi- 
nished. It appeared again, however, in 1790; and so late as 1796 there 
was great reason to fear for the few fir-trees that were left.! 

When the sap flows from a tree in consequence of the attacks of the 
above-mentioned insects, or any other cause”, it is attended by various 
beetles, as Cetonia aurata, several Nitidule and Brachyptera, &c., which 
prevent it from healing ; and if the bark be any where separated from the 
wood, a numerous army of wood-lice, earwigs, spiders, field-bugs, and 
similar subcortical insects take their station there, and prevent a re-union. 


assailants are silently at work on the rest, it is evident that the whole avenue is eventually 
doomed to destruction, and that a century must elapse before it can resume that grandeur 
which it might have retained for ages had the economy of these insects been understood, 
and the proper measures for extirpating them taken at the outset. It has been well observed, 
that in many cases a palace had better be burnt than the fine old trees that surround and 
ornament it destroyed, as the former may be rebuilt in a few years, while no cost can 
replace the latter; anda reflection somewhat similar must have passed through the mind 
of Napoleen, had he lived to witness the present broken, patched, and miserable aspect of 
one of the most striking and indispensable features of his triumphal arch, and to see in 
prospect, that even when the last victims to the destructive attacks of the despised Sco/yti— 
foes which, from his ignorance of entomology, had conquered even him—should have been 
cut down, and the unsightly gaps attempted to be filled up by planting young trees in their 
place, neither he nor his successor could ever witness in this the proudest monument of 
his reign the mingled splendor and grace which it would have exhibited, if approached, as 
he meant it to have been, through a full-grown, entire, and majestic avenue. 

' Wilhelm’s Recreations from Nat. Hist., quoted by Latreille, Hist. Nat. xi. 194. 

2 While attending to the Scolyti infesting the common elm during the tour in the north 
of France in 1836, above referred to, I noticed in the liquid matter so often seen oe 
oozing from the large ulcers in this tree a dipterous larva in considerable numbers, of whic 
this exudation is evidently the natural food ; and having bred some of them, they produced 
very minute gnat-like flies, of the genus Ceratopogon, probably (but I have not the speti- 
mens now at hand to compare with his description) C. flavifrons of Guérin (Ann. Soc. Ent. 
de France, ii. 165.), which he found in a similar situation. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 159 


The seeds of forest as well as of fruit trees are doubtless subject to 
injuries from insects; but these being more out of the reach of observa- 
tion, have not been much noticed. Acorns, however, a considerable 
article with nurserymen, are said to have both a moth and a beetle that 
prey upon them; and, what is remarkable, though sometimes one larva of 
each is found in the same acorn, yet two of either kind are never toybe 
met with together! The beetle is probably the Curculio (Balaninus) 
glandium of Mr. Marsham, and is nearly related to the species whose grub 
inhabits the nut. 

Having now conducted you round, and exhibited to you the melancholy 
proofs of the universal dominion of insects over our vegetable treasures 
while growing or endued with the principle of vitality, in their separate 
departments, I must next introduce you to a pest worse than all put 
together, which indiscriminately attacks and destroys every vegetable sub- 
stance that the earth produces, and which, wherever it prevails, carries 
famine, pestilence, and death in its train. Happily for this country—and 
we cannot be too thankful for the privilege—we know this scourge of 
nations only by report. The name of Locust, which has been such a 
sound of horror in other countries, here only suggests an object of interest- 
ing inquiry. But the ravages of locusts are so copious a theme that they 
merit to be considered in a separate letter. 

I am, &c. 


1 Reaum. ii. 502. 


160 


LETTER VII. 


INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
INDIRECT INJURIES—Continued. 


To look at a locust in a cabinet of insects, you would not, at first sight, 
deem it capable of being the source of so much evil to mankind as stands 
on record against it. ‘This is but a small creature,” you would say, 
“and the mischief which it causes cannot be far beyond the proportion of 
its bulk. The locusts. so celebrated in history must surely be of the 
Indian kind mentioned by Pliny, which were three feet in length, with 
legs so strong that the women used them as saws. I see, indeed, some 
resemblance to the horse’s head, but where are the eyes of the elephant, 
the neck of the bull, the horns of the stag, the chest of the lion, the belly 
of the scopion, the wings of the eagle, the thighs of the camel, the legs 
of the ostrich, and the tail of the serpent, all of which the Arabians men- 
tion as attributes of this widely-dreaded insect destroyer’; but of which 
in the insect before me I discern little or no likeness?” Yet, although 
this animal be not very tremendous for its size, nor very terrific in its 
appearance, it is the very same whose ravages have been the theme of 
naturalists and historians in all ages, and upon a close examination you 
will find it to be peculiarly fitted and furnished for the execution of its 
office. It is armed with two pairs of very strong jaws, the upper termi- 
nating in short and the lower in long teeth, by which it can both lacerate 
and grind its food—its stomach is of extraordinary capacity and powers— 
its hind legs enable it to leap to a considerable distance, and its ample vans 
are calculated to catch the wind as sails, and so to carry it sometimes over 
the sea; and although a single individual can effect but little evil, yet 
when the entire surface of a country is covered by them, and every one 
makes bare the spot on which it stands, the mischief produced may be_as 
infinite as their numbers. So well do the Arabians know their power, that 
they make a locust say to Mahomet, ‘ We are the army of the Great God ; 
we produce ninety-nine eggs; if the hundred were completed, we should 
consume the whole earth and all that is in it.” 

Since it is possible you may not have paid particular attention to the 
accounts given by various authors both ancient and modern, of the almost 
incredible injury done to the human race by these creatures, I shall now 
lay before you some of the most striking particulars of their devastations 
that I have been able to collect. 

The earliest plague of this kind which has been recorded, appears also 
to have been the most direful in its immediate effects that ever was inflict- 
ed upon any nation. I am speaking, as you may well suppose, of the 


1 Bochart, Hierozoic. P. ii. 1. iv. e. 5. 475. 2 Bochart, ubi supr. c. 6. 485. 
P 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 161 


locusts with which the Egyptian tyrant and his people were visited for 
their oppression of the Israelites. Only conceive to yourself a country 
so covered by them that no one can see the face of the ground—a whole 
land darkened, and all its produce, whether herb or tree, so devoured that 
not the least vestige of green is left in either.!' But it is not necessary 
for me to enlarge further upon a history, the circumstances of which are 
‘so well known to you. 

To this species of devastation Africa in general seems always to have 
been peculiarly subject. This may be gathered from the law in Cyrenaica, 
mentioned by Pliny, by which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy 
the locusts in three different states, three times in the year—first their eggs, 
then their young, and lastly the perfect insect. And not without reason 
was such a law enacted ; for Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 
3800, Africa was infested by such infinite myriads of these animals, that 
having devoured every green thing, after flying off to sea they were 
drowned, and being cast upon the shore they emitted a stench greater than 
could have been produced by the carcasses of 100,000 men.*? St. Augus- 
tine also mentions a plague to have arisen in that country from the same 
cause, which destroyed no less than 800,000 persons (octingenta hominum 
millia) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories 
bordering upon the sea.* 

From Africa this plague was occasionally imported into Italy and 
Spain ; and a historian, quoted in Mouffet, relates that in the year 591 an 
infinite army of locusts of a size unusually large, grievously ravaged part 
of Italy ; and being at last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a 
pestilence which carried off near a million of men and beasts. In the 
Venetian territory, also, in 1478, more than 30,000 persons are said to 
have perished in a famine occasioned by these terrific scourges. Many 
other instances of their devastations in Europe, in France, Spain, Italy, 
Germany®, &c., are recorded by the same author. In 1650, a cloud of 
them was seen to enter Russia in three different places, which from thence 
passed over into Poland and Lithuania, where the air was darkened by 
their numbers. In some places they were seen lying dead heaped one 
upon another to the depth of four feet; in others they covered the surface 
like a black cloth, the trees bent with their weight, and the damage they 
did exceeded all computation. Ata later period, in Languedoc, when the 
sun became hot they took wing and fell upon the corn, devouring both 
leaf and ear, and that with such expedition that in three hours they would 
consume a whole field. After having eaten up the corn, they attacked 
the vines, the pulse, the willows, and lastly the hemp, motwithstanding its 
bitterness.” ‘Sir H. Davy informs us* that the French government in 1818 
issued a decree with a view to occasion the destruction of grasshoppers. 

Even this happy island, so remarkably distinguished by its exemption 
from most of those scourges to which other nations are exposed, was once 
alarmed by the appearance of locusts. In 1748 they were observed here 


1 Exod. x. 5. 14, 15. 
? Hist. Nat.\. xi.c, 29, A similar law was enacted in Lemnos, by which every one was 
compelled to bring a certain measure of locusts annually to the magistrates. Plin. ibid. 


3 Oros. contra Pag. \. v. c. 2. 4 Lesser, L. 247. note 46. 
g 
5 Mouffet, 123. 8 Bingley, iii. 258. 


7 Philos. Trans. 1686. 8 Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, 233. 
14* 


162 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


in considerable numbers, but providentially they goon perished without 
propagating. ‘These were evidently stragglers from the vast swarms which 
in the preceding year did such infinite damage in Wallachia, Moldavia, 
Transylvania, Hungary, and Poland. One of these swarms, which enter- 
ed Transylvania in August, was several hundred fathoms in width (at 
Vienna the breadth of one of them was three miles), and extended to so 
great a length as to be four hours in passing over the Red Tower; and 
such was its density that it totally intercepted the solar light, so that 
when they flew low one person could not see another at the distance of 
twenty paces. A similar account has been given me by a friend of mine? 
long resident in India. He relates that when at Poonah he was a witness 
to an immense army of locusts which ravaged the Mahratta country, and 
was supposed to come from Arabia (this, if correct, is a strong proof of 
their power to pass the sea under favorable circumstances). The column 
they composed, my friend was informed, extended five hundred miles ; 
and so compact was it, when on the wing, that, like an eclipse, it com- 
pletely hid the sun, so that no shadow was cast by any object, and some 
lofty tombs distant from his residence not more than two hundred yards 
were rendered quite invisible. This was not the Locusta migratoria, but 
a red species ; which circumstance much increased the horror of the scene ; 
for, clustering upon the trees after they had stripped them of their foliage, 
they imparted to them a sanguine hue. ‘The peach was the last tree that 
they touched. 

Dr. Clarke, to give some idea of the infinite numbers of these animals, 
compares them to a flight of snow when the flakes are carried obliquely by 
the wind. They covered his carriage and horses, and the Tartars assert 
that people are sometimes suffocated by them. The whole face of nature 
might have been described as covered by a living veil. They consisted 
of two species, L. tatarica and migratoria ; the first is almost twice the 
size of the second, and, because it precedes it, is called by the Tartars 
the herald or messenger. The account of another traveler, Mr. Barrow, 
of their ravages in the southern parts of Africa (in 1784 and 1797) is still 
more striking : an area of nearly two thousand square miles might be said 
literally to be covered by them. When driven into the sea by a N. W, 
wind, they formed upon the shore for fifty miles a bank three or four feet 
high, and when the wind was S. E. the stench was so powerful as to be 
smelt at the distance of 150 miles.‘ 

From 1778 to 1780, the empire of Marocco was terribly devastated 
by them ; every green thing was eaten up, not even the bitter bark of the 
orange and pomegranate escaping—a most dreadful famine ensued. ‘The 
poor were seen to wander over the country deriving a miserable subsistence 
from the roots of plants; and women and children followed the camels 
from whose dung they picked the indigested grains of barley, which they 
devoured with avidity: in consequence of this, vast numbers perished, 
and the roads and streets exhibited the unburied carcasses of the dead. 
On this sad occasion, fathers sold their children, and husbands their wives.® 
When they visit a country, says Mr. Jackson, speaking of the same 


1 Philos. Trans. x\vi. 30. 

3 pre Moor, author of The Narrative of Captain Little’s Detachment, The Hindu Pan- 
theon, &c. 

3 Travels, i. 348. 4 Travels, dcc. 257, 5 Southey’s Thalaba, i. 171. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 163 


empire, it behoves every one to Jay in provision for a famine, for they stay 
from three to seven years. When they have devoured all other vegeta- 
bles, they attack the trees, consuming first the leaves and then the bark. 
From Mogador to Tangier, before the plague in- 1799, the face of the 
earth was covered by them :—at that time a singular incident occurred at 
El Araiche. The whole region from the confines of the Sahara was 
ravaged by them; but on the other side of the river El Kos not one of 
them was to be seen, though there was nothing to prevent their flying 
over it. ‘Till then they had proceeded northward ; but upon arriving at 
its banks they turned to the east, so that ail the country north of El 
Araiche was full of pulse, fruits, and grain—exhibiting a most striking 
contrast to the desolation of the adjoining district. At length they were 
all carried by a violent hurricane into the Western Ocean ; the shore, as 
in former instances, was covered by their carcasses, and a pestilence was 
caused by the horrid stench which they emitted: but when this evil 
ceased, their devastations were followed by a most abundant crop. The 
Arabs of the Desert, “whose hands are against every man,” and who 
rejoice in the evil that befalls other nations, when they behold the clouds 
of locusts proceeding from the north, are filled with gladness, anticipating 
a general mortality, which they call El-Khere (the benediction); for, 
when a country is thus laid waste, they emerge from their arid deserts and 
pitch their tents in the desolated plains.2—The neighboring kingdom of 
Spain has often suffered from the ravages of locusts. Sorecently as May, 
1841, an article in the Constitutionel French newspaper states as follows: 
“Such immense quantities of locusts have appeared this year in Spain 
that they threaten in some places entirely to destroy the crops. At Dai- 
miel, in the province of Ciudad-Real, three hundred persons are constantly 
employed in collecting these destructive insects, and though they destroy 
seventy or eighty sacks every day, they do not appear to diminish. There 
is something frightful in the appearance of these locusts proceeding in 
divisions, some of which are a league in length and 2000 paces in breadth. 
It is sufficient if these terrible columns stop half an hour on any spot, for 
every thing growing on it—vines, olive-trees, and corn—to be entirely 
destroyed. After they have passed, nothing remains but the large branches 
and the roots, which being under ground have escaped their voracity.” 
And in a late work of travels in the same country we find the following 
passage :—“ During our ride (from Cordova to Seville) we observed a 
number of men advancing in skirmishing order across the country, and 
thrashing the ground most savagely with long flails. Curious to know 
what could be the motives for this Xerxes-like treatment of the earth, we 
turned out of the road to inspect their operations, and found they were 
driving a-swarm of locusts into a wide piece of linen, spread on the ground 
some distance before them, wherein they were made prisoners. These 
animals are about three times the size of an English grasshopper. They 
migrate from Africa, and their spring visits are very destructive ; for in a 
single night they will entirely eat up a field of corn.’ 


1 Gen. xvi. 12. 2 Jackson’s Travels in Marocco, 54. 

3 Scott’s Excursions in the Mountains of Ronda and Granada. The same plan is adopted 
for the destruction of these insects in some parts of the United States; Deep trenches being 
dug at the end of fields into which the grasshoppers are driven with branches, and then 
destroyed by throwing the earth upon them. 


164 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


The noise the locusts make when engaged in theywork of destruction 
has been compared to the sound of a flame of fire driven by the wind, 
and the effect of their bite to that of fire.| The poet Southey has very 
strikingly described the noise produced by their flight and approach :— 

“ Onward they came a dark continuous cloud 
Of congregated myriads numberless, 
The rushing of whose wings was as the sound 
Of a broad river headlong in its course 
Plunged from a mountain summit, or the roar 


Of a wild ocean in the autumn storm 
Shattering:its billows on a shore of rocks!’’? 


But no account of the appearance and ravages of these terrific insects, 
for correctness and sublimity, comes near that of the prophet Joel, “A 
day of darkness and of gloominess,a day of clouds and of thick darkness, 
as the morning spread upon the mountains ; a great people and a strong: 
there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even 
to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them, and 
behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before 
them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall 
escape them. Like the noise of chariots’ on the tops of mountains shall 
they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as 
a strong people set in battle array. Before their faces the people shall 
be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like 
mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall 
march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks ; nei- 
ther shall one thrust another, they shall walk every one in his path: and 
when they fall upon the sword they shall not be wounded. They shall 
run to and fro in the city ; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb 
up upon the houses ; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The 
earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble: the sun and 
the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining!” 
The usual way in which they are destroyed is also noticed by the prophet. 
“J will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him 
into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his 
hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and _ his 
ill savor shall come up, because he hath done great things !* 

I think, after a serious consideration of all these well attested facts, 
when locusts contend with the two-legged destroyers of the human race 
for proud pre-eminence in mischief, you will find it difficult to determine 
to which the palm should be decreed ; and you will admire the propriety 
with which, in the above and other passages of Holy Writ, they are 
selected as symbols of the great ravagers of the earth of our own species. 

In many of the above instances these devastators appear to have cross- 
ed the seas, but Hasselquist asserts that they are not formed for such ex- 
tensive fights. ‘‘'The grasshopper or locust,” says he, “is not formed 
for traveling over the sea,—it cannot fly far, but must alight as soon as it 
rises ; for one that came on board us a hundred certainly were drowned. 


1 See Bochart, Hierozoic. P. 1. iv. c. 5. 474, 475. 2 Southey’s Thalaba, i. 169. 

* Of the symbolical locusts in the Apocalypse it is said—“ And the sound of their wings 
was as the sound of chariots, of many horses running to battle.” ix. 9. 

4 Joel, ii. 2—10. 20, 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 165 


We observe in the months of May and June a number of these insects 
coming from the south, and directing their course to the northern shore ; 
they darken the sky like a thick cloud; but scarcely have they quitted 
the shore, when they, who a moment before ravaged and ruined the coun- 
try, cover the surface of the sea with their dead bodies. By what instinct 
do these creatures undertake this dangerous flight? Is it not the wise 
institution of the Creator to destroy a dreadful plague to the country ?”? 
Locusts, however, as we have seen, take much longer flights than this 
author supposes them able to do. It is probable that their ability in this 
respect may depend a good deal upon their species, their age, and the 
state and direction of the wind; for, as was the case with the Egyptian 
plague, 
a a pitchy cloud 
Of locusts warping on the eastern wind ” 


may by a powerful blast be carried over a broad river, or even the sea, 
from one country to another. This idea is strongly confirmed by an 
account, exhibiting internal marks of authenticity, which appeared in the 
Alexandria Herald, an American newspaper; in which it is stated, that 
at the distance of 200 miles from the Canary Islands, the nearest land, 
the ship Georgia, Capt. Stokes, from Lisbon to Savannah, while sailing 
with a fine breeze from the south-east, was, on the 2lst of Nov. 1811, all 
at once becalmed. “A light air afterwards sprang up from the north-east, 
at which time there fell from the cloud an innumerable quantity of large 
grasshoppers, so as to cover the deck, the tops, and every part of the ship 
they could alight upon. They did not appear in the least exhausted ; on 
the contrary, when an attempt was made to take hold of them, they in- 
stantly jumped, and endeavored to elude being taken. The calm, or a 
very light air, lasted fully an hour, and during the whole of the time these 
insects continued to fall upon the ship and surround her: such as were 
within reach of the vessel alighted upon her; but immense numbers fell 
into the sea, and were seen floating in masses by the sides.” Two bottles 
of them were preserved for inspection ; the insects were of a reddish hue, 
with red and gray speckled wings. It is clear from this account, if it be 
admitted as authentic, that locusts can go far from land when the wind is 
strong, and likewise it seems equally clear that in a calm they cannot 
support themselves in the air. The principal difficulty is, how these 
locusts could make their way against the wind, which they must have done 
if they came with the black cloud, as the word seems to intimate. Perhaps 
this cloud was brought by a different current of air from that which im- 
pelled the ship. A similar statement is given in the Essex (Massachu- 
setts) Register in an extract from a letter of the mate of the brig Levant 
of Boston, who writes, “that after having encountered a severe gale on 
the 13th September (1839), when in lat. 18° north, and the nearest land 
being over 450 miles, they were surrounded for two days by large swarms 
of locusts of a large size; and in the afternoon of the second day, in a 
squall from the north-west, the sky was completely black with them. They 
covered every part of the brig immediately, sails, rigging, cabin, &c. It 
is a little singular how they could have supported themselves in the air so 
long, as there was no land to the north-west for several thousand miles. 


1 Voyage to the Levant, 444. 


166 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


Two days afterwards, the weather being moderate, the brig sailed through 
swarms of them floating dead upon the waters.’”! 

With respect to the course which the locusts pursue, Hasselquist has 
observed that they migrate in a direct meridian line from south to north, 
passing from the deserts of Arabia, which is the great cradle of them, to 
Palestine, Syria, Carmania, Natolia, Bithynia, Constantinople, Poland, 
&c.—they never turn either to the east or to the west.2,_ But this must be 
a mistaken notion ; for those which Major Moor saw at Poonah, of which 
I have given an account above’, must have come due east. Mr. Jackson 
also noticed their course north of the line to be towards the south*; and 
Sparrman tells us that those south of the line migrate in the same 
direction.® 

I fear that Hasselquist’s question,—Could they not by fright, or some 
other method, be turned from their dreadful course, to steer for some river, 
and by that means be obliged to destroy themselves ?®—must be answered 
in the negative. All such experiments, it is to be apprehended, would be 
about as effectual as sending an army, with all the apparatus of war, to 
take the field against them, as this author says is done in Syria, where the 
Bashaw of Tripoli once raised a force of 4000 soldiers to fight the 
locusts, and very summarily ordered all to be hanged who, thinking it 
beneath them to waste their valor upon such pigmy foes, refused to join 
the party.” 

Tam, &c. 


1 Ann. Nat. Hist. vi.527. The authenticity of the above accounts is fully proved by a 
fact mentioned by Mr. Darwin,—that a large grasshopper (Acrydium) flew on board the 
Beagle when she was to windward of the Cape de Verd Islands, and when the nearest 
point of land, not directly opposed to the tradewind, was Cape Blanco, on the west of 
Africa, 370 miles distant. (Journal in Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, p. 186.) 

2 Voyage to the Levant, p. 446, 447. 3 See p. 162. 

4 Travels, 54. 5 Travels, i. 366. 8 Travels, 455. 7 Travels, 447. 


167 


LETTER VIII. . 


INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
INDIRECT INJURIES—concluded. 


I Have not yet arrived at the end of my catalogue of noxious insects. 
I have introduced you, indeed, to those that annoy man in his own person, 
in his domestic animals, in the produce of his fields, gardens, orchards, 
and forests ; in a word, every thing that is endued with the vital principle: 
but I have as yet said nothing of the injuries which he receives from them 
in that part of his property, consisting either of animal or vegetable mat- 
ter, from which that principle is departed. And with these I shall con- 
clude this melancholy detail of evils inflicted upon us by the very animals 
I am enticing you to study. The rest of my correspondence, I flatter 
myself, will paint them in more inviting colors. 

The insects to which I now allude may be divided into those that attack 
and injure our food, our drugs and medicines, our clothes, our houses and 
furniture, our timber, and even the objects of our studies and amusements. 

Various are those that attempt to share our food with us. Flour and 
meal are eaten by the grub of Tenebrio molitor, best known by the name 
of the meal-worm, which will remain in it two years before it goes into its 
state of inactivity :—its ravages, however, are not confined to flour alone, 
for it will eat any thing made of that article, such as bread, cakes, and 
the like. Old flour is also very apt to be infested by a mite (Acarus 
farine).1 In long voyages the biscuit sometimes so swarms with the 
weevil and another beetle (Dermestes paniceus L.), that they are swallow- 
ed with every mouthful; and even the ground peas so abound with these 
little vermin that a spoonful of soup cannot be taken free from them.? 
Bread is also devoured by Trogosita caraboides, a larger beetle before 
alluded to. 

Every one is aware that our animal food suffers still more than our fari- 
naceous from insects; but perhaps you would not expect that our hams, 
bacon, and dried meats should have their peculiar beetle. Yet so it is; 
and this beetle (Dermestes lardarius), when a grub, sometimes commits 


1 Amen. Acad. iii. 345. ? 

2 Sparrman, i. 103. This insect, by Swedish entomologists, is supposed to be a species 
of Anobium F. (Ptinus L.); but the specimen preserved in the Linnean cabinet is Sylpha 
rosea of Mr. Marsham (Cacidula pectoralis Meg.). A small beetle of the first family of 
Cryptophagus Gyllenhal swarms often in the ship biscuit, and may probably be the insect 
Sparrman here complains of under the name of Dermestes paniceus. It is probable, how- 
ever, that there is a mistake as to the specimen in the Linnean cabinet, as there is no doubt 
that Anobium paniceum Stephens is very injurious to biscuit, of which Mr. Raddon exhibited 
to the Entomological Society several perforated, in all directions by the larve of this 
insect, which, strange to say, he found to feed also on Cayenne pepper. (vans. Ent. Soc. 
Lond. i. proc. 1xxxv. ii. proc. xxi.) 


168 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


great devastation in them; as does that of another described by De Geer 
under the name of Tenebrio lardarius.1 How ie our fresh meat of 
all kinds, our poultry and fish, are exposed to the flesh-fly, whose maggots 
will turn us disgusted from our tables, if we do not carefully guard these 
articles from being blown by them, you well know ;—and assailants more 
violent, hornets, wasps, and the great rove-beetle (Creophilus mazillosus), 
if butchers do not protect their shambles, will carry off no inconsiderable 
portion of their meat. A small cock-roach (Blatta lapponica), which I 
have taken upon our eastern coast, swarms in the huts of the Laplanders, 
and will sometimes annihilate in a single day, a work in which a carrion- 
beetle (Silpha lapponica) joins, their whole stock of dried fish.2 The 
quantity of sugar that flies and wasps will devour if they can come at it, 
especially the latter, the diminutive size of the creatures considered, is 
astonishing :—in one year long ago, when sugar was much cheaper than it 
is now, a tradesman told me he calculated his loss, by the wasps alone, at 
twenty pounds. A singular spectacle is exhibited in India (so Captain 
Green relates) by a small red ant with a black head. They march in 
long files, about three abreast, to any place where sugar is kept; and when 
they are saturated, return in the same order, but by a different route. If 
the sugar, upon which they are busy, be carried into the sun, they imme- 
diately desert it. What is very extraordinary, these ants are also fond of 
oil. Sweetmeats and preserves are very subject to be attacked by a mi- 
nute oblong transparent mite with very short legs, and without any hair 
upon its body. Our butter and lard are stated to be eaten by the cater- 
pillar of a moth (Aglossa pinguinalis). Tyrophaga* casez, the parent fly 
of the jumping cheese-maggot, loses no opportunity, we know, of laying 
its eggs in our fresh cheeses, and when they get dry and old the mite 
(Acarus siro) settles her colonies in them, which multiply incredibly. 
Other substances, more unlikely, do not escape from our pigmy depreda- 
tors. Thus Reaumur tells us of a little moth whose larva feeds upon 
chocolate, observing very justly that this could not have been its original 
food. Both a moth and a beetle (Sylvanus frumentarius ?) were detected 
by Leeuwenhoek preying upon two of our spices, the mace and the nut- 
meg.> The maggots of a fly (Drosophila cellaris) are found in vinegar, 
in the manufactories of which the perfect insects swarm in incredible num- 
bers ; others I have found in wine, which turned to a minute fly, of a yellow 
color, with dark eyes and abdomen, which, though near Anthomyta as to 
its wings, appears to belong to a distinct genus not published by Meigen, 
which in my MS. stands under the name of Oinopota ventralis®; and 


1 De Geer, v. 46. This insect appears nearly related to Mr. Marsham’s Corticaria pulla 
(E. B.i. 11. 14.; Latridius porcatus Herbst.), if it be not the same insect. 

2 Aman. Acad. iii. 345. 

3 This name has long been given to this insect, and. the characters of the genus were 
drawn by Mr. Curtis before the publication of Meigen’s fifth volume (in which the genus 
is called Piophila) ; it is therefore retained. See Curtis, Buit. Ent. t. 126.) 

4 Reaum. iii. 276. 5 Leeawenh. Epist. 99. 

6 Though our foreign wines, after being deposited in bottles in our cellars, would seem 
secure from the attacks of insects, a friend of S. S. Saunders, Esq. found, on removing his 
stock from one cellar to another, that the corks of many of the bottles had been so eaten 
as to let the wine leak out. The authors of this mischief seem to have been chiefly cock- 
roaches, which had gnawed off the corks of the claret only so far as they were unimpreg- 
nated with the wine; but finding the sweet flavor of the Persian shiraz and old hock more 
to their taste, had encroached upon the corks of these so deeply as to allow the wine to 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 169 


sometimes even water in the casks of ships, in long voyages, so abounds 
with larvez of this tribe as to render it extremely disgusting. Browne, in 
his History of Jamaica, mentions an ant (Formica omnivora L.), probably 
belonging to Myrmica, that consumes or spoils all kinds of food; which 
perhaps may be the same species that has been observed in Ceylon by 
Percival, and is described by him as inhabiting dwelling-houses, dnd 
speedily devouring every thing it can meet with. If at table any one 
drops a piece of bread, or of other food, it instantly appears in motion as 
if animated, from the vast number of these creatures that fasten upon it 
in order to carry it off. They can be kept, he tells us, by no contrivance 
from invading the table, and settling in swarms on the bread, sugar, and 
such things as they like. It is not uncommon to see a cup of tea, upon 
being poured out, completely covered with these creatures, and floating 
dead upon it like a scum.! 

In some countries the number of flies and other insects that enter the 
house in search of food, or allured by the light, is so great as to spoil the 
comfort of almost every meal. We are told that during the rainy season 
in India, insects of all descriptions are so incredibly numerous, and so 
busy every where, that it is often absolutely necessary to remove the lights 
from the supper table:—were this not done, moths, flies, bugs, beetles, 
and the like, would be attracted in such numbers as to extinguish them 
entirely. When the lights are retained on the table, in some places they 
are put into glass cylinders, which St. Pierre tells us is the custom in the 
Island of Mauritius*; in others the candlesticks are placed in soup plates, 
into which the insects are precipitated and drowned. Nothing can exceed 
the irritation caused by the stinking bugs when they get into the hair or 
between the linen and the body ; and if they be bruised upon it the skin 
comes off?? To use the language of a poet of the Indies from whom 
some of the above facts are selected,— 

“On every dish the booming beetle falls, 
The cockroach plays, or caterpillar crawls: 
A thousand shapes of variegated hues 
Parade the table or inspect the stews. 
To living walls the swarming hundreds stick, 
Or court, a dainty meal, the oily wick ; 
Heaps over heaps their slimy bodies drench, 
Out go the lamps with suffocating stench. 
When hideous insects every plate defile, 
The laugh how empty, and how forced the smile !’’4 

Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous to us, form occa- 
sionally part of the food of insects. A small beetle (Sinodendrum pusil- 
lum®) eats the roots of rhubarb, in which I detected it in the East India 
Company’s warehouses. Opium is a dainty morceau to the white 


escape, A few individuals of two minute beetles, Cryptuphagus cellaris and Mycetea hirta, 
a minute Acarus, and Atropos lignarius, were found on the corroded corks, but seem more 
likely to have been attracted by the oozing wine than to have originally caused the dam- 
age. (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. lv.) Mr. Thwaites suggests that Blaps mortisaga is 
more likely to have eaten the corks than cockroaches, which do not usually frequent 
cellars, whereas the former are found very generally in those of Bristol; and, as he has 
observed the stomach of the individuals of these insects which he dissected to be filled 
with what seemed saw-dust, they may probably also eat corks, which indeed he found they 
did on putting them into a box along with the insects. 

1 Ceylon, 307. 2 Voyage, &e. 72. 

3 Williamson’s East India Vade Mecum. 4 Calcutta, a Poem, 85. 

5 Ptinus piceus, Marsh. 

15 


170 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


ants';—and, what is more extraordinary, Anobiwm paniceum® has been 


known to devour the blister-beetle (Cantharis vesicatoria), and even, as 


has been already observed, Cayenne pepper. Swammerdam amongst his 
treasures mentions ‘a detestable beetle,’ produced from a worm that eats 
the roots of ginseng ; and he likewise notices another, the larve of which 
devours the bag of the musk.? The cochineal, at Rio de Janeiro, is the 
prey of an insect resembling an Ichneumon, but furnished with only two 
wings ; its station is in the cotton that envelops the Coccus. Previous to 
its assumption of the pupa, it ejects a large globule of pure red coloring 
matter.4 And lastly, the Coccus that produces the lac (C. lacca) is, we 
are told, devoured by various insects.° 

Perhaps you may imagine that these universal destroyers spare at least 
our garments, in which you may at first conceive there can be nothing 
very tempting to excite even the appetite of an insect. Your housekeeper, 
however, would probably tell you a different story, and enlarge upon the 
trouble and pains it costs her to guard those under her care against the 
ravages of the moths. Upon further inquiry you would find that nothing 
made of wool, whether cloth or stuff, comes amiss to them. ‘There are 
five species described by Linné, which are more or less engaged in this 
work :— Tinea vestianella, tapetzella, pellionella, Laverna sarcitella, and 
Galleria mellonella. Of the first we have no particular history, except 
that it destroys garments in the summer; but of the others Reaumur has 
given a complete one. ‘T’. tapetzella, or the tapestry moth, not uncom- 
mon in our houses, is most injurious to the lining of carriages, which are 
more exposed to the air than the furniture of our apartments. ‘These do 
not construct a moveable habitation like the common species, but, eating 
their way in the thickness of the cloth, weave themselves silken galleries 
in which they reside, and which they render close and warm by covering 
them with some of the eroded wool.® ‘T’. pellionella is a most destructive 
insect ; and ladies have often to deplore the ravages which it commits in 
their valuable furs, whether made up into muffs or tippets. It pays no 
more respect to the regal ermine than to the woollen habiliments of the 
poor; its proper food, indeed, being hair, though it devours both wool and 
fur. This species, if hard pressed by hunger, will even eat horse-hair, 
and make its habitation, a moveable house or case in which it travels from 
place to place, of this untractable material. These little creatures will 
shave the hair from a skin as neatly and closely as if a razor had been 
employed.?. The most natural food of the next species, L. sarettella, is 
wool; but in case of necessity it will eat fur and hair. ‘To woollen cloths 
or stuffs it often does incredible injury, especially if they are not kept dry 
and well aired.? Of the devastation committed by Galleria mellonella in 
our bee-hives I have before given you an account: to this I must here add, 
that if it cannot come at wax, it will content itself with woollen cloth, 
leather, or even paper.’ Mr. Curtis found the grub of a beetle (Ptinus 


' On examining ninety-two chests of opium, part of the cargo saved from the Charlton, 
previously to reshipping them from Chittagong for China, thirteen were found to be full of 
white ants, which had almost wholly devoured the opium. (Article from Chittagong, Nov. 
1812, in one of the Newspapers, July 31, 1813.) 

2 Ptinus rubellus, Marsh. 3 Bibl. Nat. i. 125. b. 126. a. 

4 Sir Geo. Staunton’s Voy. 8vo. 189. 

5 Kerr in Philos. Trans. 1781. 

5 Reaum. ili. 266. 7 Ibid. 59. 8 Ibid. 42. ® Ibid. 257. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 171 
- ° 


fur) in an old coat, which. it devoured, making holes and channels in it; 
and another insect of the same order (Attagenus pellio), Linné tells us, 
will sometimes entirely strip a fur garment of its hair! A small beetle of 
the Capricorn tribe (Callydium pygmeum Fabr.) I have good reason to 
believe devours leather, since I have found it abundant in old shoes.? 
Next to our garments our houses and buildings, which shelter us and 
our property from the inclemency and injuries of the atmosphere, are of 
consequence to us: yet these, solid and substantial as they appear, are 
not secure from the attack of insects; and even our furniture often suffers 
from them. A great part of our comfort within doors depends upon our 
apartments being kept clean and neat. Spiders by their webs, which they 
suspend in every angle, and flies by their excrements, which they scatter 
indiscriminately upon every thing, interfere with this comfort, and add 
much to the business of our servants. Even ants will sometimes plant 
their colonies in our kitchens (I have known the horse-ant, Formica rufa, 
do this), and are not easily expelled. Those of Sierra Leone, as 1 was 
once informed by the learned Professor Afzelius, make their way by mil- 
lions through the houses. ‘They resoiutely pursue a straight course; and 
neither buildings nor rivers, even though myriads perish in the attempt, 
can divert them from it. Several tribes of insects seek their food in the 
timber employed in our houses, buildings, gates or fences, or made up into 
furniture. The large oaken beams, which, according to the old mode of 
building, support the joists of the upper floors in the houses at Brussels, 
as I had an opportunity of observing when there in 1836, have often their 
extremities so eaten away like a honeycomb by the larve of a beetle 
(Anobium tessellatum, some of the dead perfect insects of which I found 
in their holes), that it is necessary to replace them at great expense to 
prevent the floors coming down ; and [I subsequently saw beams similarly 
attacked which had been removed from houses at Antwerp.4- M. Audouin 
has laid before the French Academy an account of the injury done by 
Termes lucifugus to the wood-work of buildings at Rochefort and La 
Rochelle; and of that of the new galleries of the Museum of Natural 
History at Paris by the larve of a small beetle (Lyctus canaliculatus Fab.). 
which feeds on the sapwood, in which its egg had probably been deposited 
before the wood was worked up.° Of one of the timber-eating beetles 
(Anobium pertinaz) Linné complains “ terebravit et destruxit sedilia mea® ;” 
and I can renew the same complaint against A. striatum, which not only 
has destroyed my chairs, but also picture-frames, and has perforated 
in every direction the deal floor of my chamber, from which it annually 
emerges through little round apertures in great numbers. The utility of 
entomological knowledge in economics was strikingly exemplified when 


1 Amen. Acad. 346. 

2 Hides and skins are attacked by several species of Dermestes, which are sometimes so 
injurious in the large skin warehouses of London, that the merchants offered 20,000/. as a 
reward for an available remedy. (Westwood, Mod. Class. Ins. i. p. 158. 

3 Within the last few years, a very minute yellow ant (Myrmica domestica Shuckard) has 
become a great pest in many houses in Brighton, London, and Liverpool; in some cases to 
so great an extent as to cause the occupants to leave them. Dr. Bostock was obliged to 
replace the floor of his kitchen, under which they swarmed in incredible numbers, by a 
new one resting on tiles imbeded in cement. (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 66. proc. li. lii. ; 
Shuckard in Mag. Nat. Hist. MS. ii. 626.) 

4 Spence in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. x. 

5 Guérin-Méneville, Revue. Zoolog. 1840, p. 151. & Syst. Nat. 565, 2. 


172 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


the great naturalist just mentioned, at the desire of the king of Sweden, 
traced out the cause of the destruction of the oak*timber in the royal 
dock-yards; and, having detected the lurking culprit under the form of a 
beetle (Lymexylon navale), by directing the timber to be immersed during 
the time of the metamorphosis of that insect and its seasons of oviposition, 
furnished a remedy which effectually secured it from its future attacks.’ 
No Coleopterous insects are more singular than those that belong to the 
genus paussus L.; and one of them, at least, remarkable, it is said, for 
emitting a phosphoric light from the globes of its antenne, is also a tim- 
ber-feeder? ; and the genus Trypoxylon, many species of Crabro, Eumenes 
parietum, Latreille’s genera Xylocopa, Chelostoma, Heriades, Megachile, 
and Anthophora (all separated from Apis L.), perforate posts and rails 
and other timber, to form cells for their young.? 

The Linnean order Aptera furnishes another timber-eating insect, a 
kind of wood-louse (Limnoria terebrans of Dr. Leach), which though 
scarcely an eighth of the size of the common one in point of rapidity of 
execution seems to surpass all its European brethren, and in many cases 
may be productive of more serious injury than any of them, since it 
attacks the wood-work of piers and jetties constructed in salt water, and 
so effectually as to threaten the rapid destruction of those in which it hag 
established itself. In December, 1815, I was favored by Charles Lut- 
widge, Esq. of Hull, with specimens of wood from the piers at Bridlington 
Quay, which wofully confirm the fears entertained of their total ruin by 
the hosts of these pigmy assailants that have made good a lodgement in 
them, and which, though not so big as a grain of rice, ply their mastica- 
tory organs with such assiduity as have reduced great part of the wood- 
work which constitutes their food into a state resembling honeycomb. 
One specimen was a portion of a three-inch fir plank nailed to the 
North Pier about three years before, which is crumbled away to less than 
an inch in thickness—in fact, deducting the space occupied by the cells 
which cover both surfaces as closely as possible, barely half an inch of 
solid wood is left; and though its progress is slower in oak, that wood is 
equally liable to be attacked by it.* If this insect were easily introduced 
to new stations, it might soon prove as destructive to our jetties as the 
Teredo navalis to those of Holland, and induce the necessity of substituting 
stone for wood universally, whatever the expense: but happily it seems 
endowed with very limited powers of migration ; for, though it has spread 
along both the South and East Piers of Bridlington harbor, it has not yet, 
as Mr. Lutwidge informs me, reached the dolphin nor an insulated jetty 
within the harbor. No other remedy against its attacks is known than 
that of keeping the wood free from salt water for three or four days, in 
which case it dies ; but this method, it is obvious, can be rarely appli- 
cable.® 


1 Smith’s Jatroduction to Botany, Pref. xv. .* Afzelius in Linn. Trans. iv. 261. 

3 Kirby. Mon. Ap. Ang. i. 152. 194. Latreille, Gen. iv. 161—. 

4 See the elaborate memoir of Mr. Coldstream in Edin. New Phil. Journ. April, 1834 ; 
remarks on this insect by the Rev. F. W. Hope in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 119. ; also by 
Dr. Moore, in Mag. of Nat. Hist. N.S. ii. 206., who states that its injurious effects have 
been known at least forty years in the harbor at Plymouth, where it is called the “ gribble.” 

5 In order to ascertain how far pure sea water is essential to this insect, and consequently 
what danger exists of its being introduced into the wood-work of our docks and piers com- 
municating with oar salt-water rivers, as at Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, Ipswich, &c., where 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 178 


How dear are their books, their cabinets of the various productions of 
nature, and their collections of prints and other works of art and science, to 
the learned, the scientific, and the virtuosi! Even these precious treasures 
have their insect enemies. The larva of Aglossa pinguinalis, whose 
ravages in another quarter I have noticed before', will establish itself upon 
the binding of a book, and spinning a robe, which it covers with its own 
excrement?, will do it no little injury ; as also does a minute beetle of the 
family of Scolytide (Hypothenemus eruditus Westw.), which Mr. West- 
wood found burrowing in considerable numbers in the same situation.2 A 
mite (Cheyletus eruditus) eats the paste that fastens the paper over the 
edge of the binding, and so loosens it. I have also often observed the 
caterpillar of another little moth, of which I have not ascertained the 
species, that takes its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and 
there commits great ravages; and many a black-letter rarity, which in 
these days of Bibliomania would have been valued at its weight in gold, 
has been snatched by these destroyers from the hands of book-collectors. 
The little wood-boring beetles before mentioned (Anobium pertinax and 
striatum) also attacks books, and will even bore through several volumes. 
M. Peignot mentions an instance where, in a public library but little 
frequented, twenty-seven folio volumes were perforated in a straight line by 
the same insect (probably one of these species), in such a manner that on 
passing a string through the perfectly round hole made by it these twenty- 
seven volumes could be raised at once.® ‘The animals last mentioned 
also destroy prints and drawings, whether framed or preserved in a porte- 
feuille, and even paintings; it appearing from a parliamentary report on 
the state of the paintings in the National Gallery, and subsequent obser- 
vations of M. Waagen, that the paste applied to the canvass of the fine 
picture of the Raising of Lazarus, by Sebastian del Piombo, has been so 
attacked by the larve of an insect (supposed to be Anobium paniceum), 
that its destruction is to be feared if some remedy cannot be found. The 
same insect has done considerable injury, as we learn from Mr. Holme, to 
the Arabic manuscripts in the Cambridge Library brought from Cairo by 
Burckhardt. Our collections of quadrupeds, birds, insects, and plants 
have likewise several terrible insect enemies, which, without pity or re- 
morse, often destroy or mutilate our most highly prized specimens. Ptinus 
fur and Anthrenus museorum, two minute beetles, are amongst the worst ; 
especially the latter, whose singular gliding larva, when once it gets 
amongst them, makes astonishing havoc, the birds soon shedding their 
feathers, and the insects falling to pieces.) Mr. W. S. Macleay informs 
me that at the Havanna it is exceedingly difficult to preserve insects, &c., 
as the ants devour every thing. One of the worst plagues of the ento- 


it might be far more injurious than even on the coast, I have, since December 15th, 1815, 
when Mr. Lutwidge was so kind as to furnish me with a piece of oak full of the insects in 
a living state, poured a weak solution of common salt over the wood every other day, so as 
to keep the insects constantly wet.. On examining it this day (Feb. 5th, 1816) I found 
them alive; and, what seems to prove them in as good health as in their natural habitat, 
numbers have established themselves in a piece of fir-wood which I nailed to the oak, and 
have in this short interval, and in winter too, bored many cells in it. 

1 See p. 168. ? Reaum. iii. 270. 

3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 34. 4 Schrank, Enum. Ins. Austr. 513. 1058. 

5 Horne’s Introd. to Bibliography, i. 311. 

® Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. xlii. xliii.; proc. 18. ix. 


15* 


174 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


mologist is a mite (Acarus destructor Schrank) : this, if his specimens be 
at all damp, eats up all the muscular parts (Canthdris vesicatoria being 
almost the only insect that is not to its taste), and thus entirely destroys 
them. If spiders by any means get amongst them, they will do no little 
mischief.—Some I have observed to be devoured by a minute moth, per- 
haps Tinea insectella! ; and in the posterior thighs of a species of Locusta 
from China I once found, one in each thigh, a small beetle congenerous 
with Antherophagus pallens, that had devoured the interior. It is, I 
believe, either Acarus destructor or Cheyletus eruditus that eats the gum 
employed to fasten down dried plants. 

There are other insects which do not confine themselves to one or two 
articles, but make a general and indiscriminate attack upon our dead stock. 
Ulloa mentions one peculiar to Carthagena, called there the comegen, 
which he describes as a kind of moth or maggot so minute as to be scarcely 
visible to the naked eye.?_ ‘This destroys, says he, the furniture of houses, 
particularly all kinds of hangings, whether of cloth, linen or silk, gold or 
silver stuffs, or lace; in short, every thing except solid metal. It will in 
a single night ruin all the goods of a warehouse in which it has got footing, 
reducing bales of merchandize to dust without altering their appearance, 
so that the mischief is not perceived till they come to be handled.? If 
we make some deduction from this account for exaggeration, still the amount 
of damage will be very considerable. 

There are three kinds of insects better known, to whose ravages, as 
most prominent and celebrated, I shall last call your attention. The 
insects | mean are the cock-roach (Blatta orientalis), the house-cricket 
(Gryllus domesticus), and the various species of white ants (Termes). 
The last of these, most fortunately for us, are not yet naturalized. 

The cock-roaches hate the light, at least the kind that is most abundant 
in Britain (for B. germanica, which abounds in some houses, is bolder, 
making its appearance in the day, and running up the walls and over the 
tables, to the great annoyance of the inhabitants), and never come forth 
from their hiding-places till the lights are removed or extinguished. In 
the London houses, especially on the ground-floor, they are most abundant, 
and consume every thing they can find, flour, bread, meat, clothes, and 
even shoes.* As soon as light, natural or artificial, reappears, they all 
scamper off as fast as they can, and vanish in an instant. These pests 
are not indigenous here, and perhaps no where in Europe, but are one of 
the evils which commerce has imported; and we may think ourselves 
well off that others of the larger species of the genus have not been 
introduced in the same way—as, for instance, Blatta gigantea, a native 
of Asia, Africa, and America, many times the size of the common one, 
which, not content with devouring meat, clothes, and books, even attacks 
persons in their sleep, and the extremities of the dead and dying.° 

The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still more annoying insect 


1 Atropos pulsatorious does much mischief by devouring the more delicate parts of minute 
insects in vollections in which camphor or some other insectifuge is not kept. 

2 Jt appears from Humboldt (Personal Narrative, E. T. v. 116.) that the destructive 
insects called by this name are Termites. 

3 Ulloa, i. 67. 4 Amen. Acad. iii. 345. 

5 Drury’s Insects, iii. Preface. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 175 


than the common cock-roach, adding an incessant noise to its ravages ; 
since, although for a short time, it may not be unpleasant to hear 


“the cricket chirrup in the hearth,” 


so constant a din every evening must very much interrupt comfort and 
conversation. ‘These garrulous animals, which live in a kind of artificial 
torrid zone, are very thirsty souls, and are frequently found drowned in 
pans of water, milk, broth, and the like. Whatever is moist, even stock- 
ings or linen hung out to dry, is to them a bonne bouche; they will eat 
the scummings of pots, yeast, crumbs of bread, and even salt, or any thing 
within their reach. Sometimes they are so abundant in houses as to 
become absolute pests, flying into the candles and into people’s faces. 

At Cuddapa, in the ceded districts to the northward of Mysore, Captain 
Green was much annoyed by a jumping insect, which from his description, 
I should take for the larva of a species of cricket. They were of a dun 
color, and from half to three fourths of an inch in length. They abounded 
at night, and were very injurious to papers and books, which they both 
discolored and devoured ; leather also was eaten by them. Such was their 
boldness and avidity, that they attacked the exposed parts of the body 
when you were asleep, nibbling the ends of the fingers, particularly the 
skin under the nails, which was only discoverable by a slight soreness that 
succeeded. So great was their agility that they could seldom be caught 
or crushed. ‘They were a mute insect, but probably the imago would 
make noise enough. 

But the white ants, wherever they prevail, are a still worse plague than 
either of these insects—they are the great calamity, as Linné terms them, 
of both the Indies. When they find their way into houses or warehouses, 
nothing less hard than metal or glass escapes their ravages. Their favorite 
food, however, is wood of all kinds, except the teak (Tectona grandis) 
and iron-wood (Sideroxylon), which are the only sorts known that they 
will not touch!; and so infinite are the multitudes of the assailants, and 
such is the excellence of their tools, that all the timber-work of a spacious 
apartment is often destroyed by them in a few nights. Exteriorly, how- 
ever, every thing appears as if untouched; for these wary depredators, 
‘and this is what constitutes the greatest singularity of their history, carry 
on all their operations by sap and mine, destroying first the inside of solid 
substances, and scarcely ever attacking their outside, until first they have 
concealed it and their operations with a coat of clay. A general similarity 
runs through the proceedings of the whole tribe; but the large African 
species (called by Smeathman Termes bellicosus), T. fatalis, is the most 
formidable. ‘These insects live in large clay nests, from whence they 
excavate tunnels all round, often to the extent of several hundred feet ; 
from these they will descend a considerable depth below the foundation of 
a house, and rise again through the floors ; or, boring through the posts 
and supports of the building, enter the roof, and construct there their galle- 


pth ibe ESS AS eS i I Wo! 0 

' It is not its hardness that protects the teak, as the Asiatic Termites attack Lignum Vite, 
but probably some essential oil disagreeable to them with which it is impregnated. This is 
the more likely, since they will eat it when it is old and has been long exposed to the air. 
Tannin has been conjectured to be the protecting substance, but erroneously, as leather of 
every kind is devoured by them. (Williamson’s East India Vade Mecum, ii. 56.) It is its 
hardness probably that protects the iron-wood from the African Termites. (Smeathman in 
Philos. Trans. 1781, 11. 47.) 


176 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


ries in various directions. If a post be a convenient path to the roof, or 
has any weight to support, which how they discover fs not easily conjec- 
tured, they will fill it with their mortar, leaving only a track-way for them- 
selves ; and thus, as it were, convert it from wood into stone as hard as 
many kinds of freestone. In this manner they soon destroy houses, and 
sometimes even whole villages when deserted by their inhabitants, so that 
in two or three years not a vestige of them will remain. 

These insidious insects are not less expeditious in destroying the wain- 
scoting, shelves, and other fixtures of a house, than the house itself. With 
the most consummate art and skill they eat away the inside of what they 
attack, except a few fibres here and there, which exactly suffice to keep 
the two sides, or top and bottom, connected, so as to retain the appearance 
of solidity after the reality is gone; and all the while they carefully avoid 
perforating the surface, unless a book or any other thing that tempts 
them should be standing upon it. Kempfer, speaking of the white ants 
of Japan, gives a remarkable instance of the rapidity with which these 
miners proceed. Upon rising one morning he observed that one of their 
galleries of the thickness of his little finger had been formed across his 
table ; and upona further examination he found that they had bored a passage 
of that thickness up one foot of the table, formed a gallery across it, and 
then pierced down another foot into the floor: all this was done in the 
few hours that intervened between his retiring to rest and his rising.’ 
They make their way also with the greatest ease into trunks and boxes, 
even though made of mahogany, and destroy papers and every thing they 
contain, constructing their galleries and sometimes taking up their abode 
in them. Hence, as Humboldt informs us, throughout all the warmer 
parts of equinoctial America, where these and other destructive insects 
abound, it is infinitely rare to find papers which go fifty or sixty years 
back.? In one night they will devour all the boots and shoes that are left 
in their way ; cloth, linen, or books are equally to their taste; but they 
will not eat cotton, as Captain Green informs me. I myself have to de- 
plore that they entirely consumed a collection of insects made for me by 
a friend in India, more especially as it sickened him of the employment. 
In a word, scarcely any thing, as I said before, but metal or stone comes 
amiss to them. Mr. Smeathman relates, that a party of them once took 
a fancy to a pipe of fine old Madeira, not for the sake of the wine, almost 
the whole of which they let out, but of the staves, which however I sup- 
pose were strongly imbued with it, and perhaps on that account were not 
less to the taste of our epicure Termites. Having left a compound micro- 
scope in a warehouse at Tobago for a few months, on his return he. found 
that a colony of a small species of white ant had established themselves 
in it, and had devoured most of the wood-work, leaving little besides the 
metal and glasses. A shorter period sufficed for their demolition of some 
of Mr. Forbes’s furniture. On surveying a room which had been locked 
up during an absence of a few weeks, he observed a number of advanced 
works in various directions towards some prints and drawings in English 
frames ; the glasses appeared to be uncommonly dull, and the frames 


1 Japan, ii. 127, 2 Political Essay on New Spain, iv. 135. 
3 This account of the Termites is chiefly taken from Smeathman in Philos. Trans. 1781, 
and Percival’s Ceylon, 307. 


INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 177 


covered with dust. “On attempting,” says he, “to wipe it off, I was 
astonished to find the glasses fixed to the wall, not suspended in frames as 
T left them, but completely surrounded by an incrustation cemented by the 
white ants, who had actually eaten up the deal frames and back-boards, 
and the greater part of the paper, and left the glasses upheld by the incrus- 
tation, or covered way, which they had formed during their depredation.””* 
It is even asserted that the superb residence of the Governor-General at 
Calcutta, which cost the East India Company such immense sums, is now 
rapidly going to decay in consequence of the attacks of these insects.2— 
But not content with the dominions they have acquired, and the cities they 
have laid low on Terra Firma, encouraged by success the white ants have 
also aimed at the sovereignty of the ocean, and once had the hardihood to 
attack even a British ship of the line ; and in spite of the efforts of her 
commander and his valiant crew, having boarded they got possession of 
her, and handled her so roughly, that when brought into port, being no 
longer fit for service, she was obliged to be broken up.® 

And here, I think, I see you throw aside my papers, and hear you 
exclaim—*“ Will this enumeration of scourges, plagues, and torments never 
be finished? Was the whole insect race created merely with punitive 
views, and to mar the fair face of universal nature? Are they all, as our 
Saviour said figuratively of one genus, the scorpion, the powerful agents 
and instruments of the great enemy of mankind ?’’* If you view the subject 
in another light, you will soon, my friend, be convinced that, instead of this, 
insects generally answer the most beneficial ends, and promote in various 
ways, and in an extraordinary degree, the welfare of man and animals ; 
and that the series of evils [ have been engaged in enumerating mostly 
occur partially, and where they exceed their natural limits ; God permitting 
this occasionally to take place, not merely with punitive views, but also to 
show us what mighty effects he can produce by instruments seemingly the 
most insignificant ; thus calling upon us to glorify his power, wisdom, and 
goodness, so evidently manifested whether he relaxes or draws tight the 
reins by which he guides insects in their course, and regulates their progress ; 
and more particularly to acknowledge his overruling Providence so conspic- 
uously exhibited by his measuring them, as it were, and weighing them, 
and telling them out, so that their numbers, forces, and powers being an- 
nually proportioned to the work he has prescribed to them, they may neither 
exceed his purpose nor fall short of it. 

From the picture I have drawn, and I assure you it is not overcharged, 
you will be disposed to admit, however, the empire of insects over the 
works of creation, and to own that our prosperity, comfort, and happiness 
are intimately connected with them ; and consequently that the knowledge 
and study of them may be extremely useful and necessary to promote 


! Oriental Memoirs, i. 362. 

2 Morning Herald, Dec. 31st, 1814. 

3? The ship here alluded to was the Albion, which was in such a condition from the at- 
tack of insects, supposed to be white ants, that, had not the ship been firmly lashed together, 
it was thought she would have foundered on her voyage home.—The late Mr. Kittoe inform- 
ed me that the Droguers or Draguers a kind of lighter employed in the West Indies in 
collecting the sugar, sometimes so swarm with ants, of the common kind, that they have 
no other * way of. getting rid of these troublesome insects than by sinking the vessel in 
shallow water. 4 Luke, x. 19. 


178 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 


these desirable ends, since the knowledge of the cause of any evil is always 
a principal, if not an indispensable, step towards a remedy. 

I shall now bid adieu to this unpromising subject, which has so long 
occupied my pen, and I fear wearied your attention, and in my next bring 
before you a more agreeable scene, in which you will behold the benefits 


we receive by the ministry of insects. 
I am, &c. 


179 


LETTER IX. . 


BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS, 
INDIRECT BENEFITS. 


My last letters contained, I must own, a most melancholy though not an 
overcharged picture of the injuries and devastation which man, in various 
ways, experiences through the instrumentality of the insect world. In this 
and the following I hope to place before you a more agreeable scene, since 
in them I shall endeavor to point out in what respects these minute ani- 
mals are made to benefit us, and what advantages we reap from their 
extensive agency. 

God, in all the evil which he permits to take place, whether spiritual, 
moral, or natural, has the ultimate good of his creatures in view. The 
evil that we suffer is often a countercheck which restrains us from greater 
evil, ora spur to stimulate us to good: we should therefore consider every 
thing, not according to the present sensation of pain, or the present loss or 
injury that it occasions, but according to its more general, remote, and 
permanent effects and bearings ;—whether by it we are not impelled to 
the practice of many virtues which otherwise might lie dormant in us— 
whether our moral habits are not improved—whether we are not rendered 
by it more prudent, cautious, and wary, more watchful to prevent evil, 
more ingenious and skilful to remdy it—and whether our higher faculties 
are not brought more into play, and our mental powers more invigorated, 
by the meditation and experiments necessary to secure ourselves. Viewed 
in these lights, what was at first regarded as wholly made up of evil, may 
be discovered to contain a considerable proportion of good. 

This reasoning is here particularly applicable; and if the ultimate 
benefit to man seems in any case problematical, it is merely because to 
discover it requires more extended and remote views than we are enabled 
by our limited faculties to take, and a knowledge of distant or concealed 
results which we are incompetent to calculate or discover. The common 
good of this terraqueous globe requires that all things endowed with vege- 
table or animal life should bear certain proportions to each other ; and if 
any individual species exceeds that proportion, from beneficial it becomes 
noxious, and interferes with the general welfare. It was requisite therefore 
for the benefit of the whole system that certain means should be provided, 
by which this hurtful luxuriance might be checked, and all things taught 
to keep within their proper limits: hence it became necessary that some 
should prey upon others, and a part be sacrificed for the good of the whole. 

Of the counterchecks thus provided, none act a more important part 
than insects, particularly in the vegetable kingdom, every plant having its 
insect enemies. Man, when he takes any plant from its natural state and 
makes it an object of cultivation, must expect that these agents will follow 


180 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


it into the artificial state in which he has placed it, and still prey upon it ; 
and it is his business to exert his faculties in inventing means to guard 
against their attacks. It is a wise provision that there should exist a race 
of beings empowered to remove all her superfluous productions from the 
face of nature; and in effecting this, whatever individual injury may arise, 
insects must be deemed general benefactors. Even the locusts which 
lay waste whole countries clear the way for the renovation of their vege- 
table productions, which were in danger of being destroyed by the exube- 
rance of some individual species, and thus are fulfilling the great law of the 
Creator, that of all which he has made nothing should be lost. A region, 
Sparrman tells us, which had been choked up by shrubs, perennial plants, 
and hard half-withered and unpalatable grasses, after being made bare 
by these scourges, soon appears in a far more beautiful dress, clothed with 
new herbs, superb lilies, and fresh annual grasses, and young and juicy 
shoots of the perennial kinds, affording delicious herbage for the wild cattle, 
and game.!_ And thouglr the interest of individual man is often sacrificed 
to the general good, in many cases the insect pests which he most 
execrates will be found to be positively beneficial to him, unless when 
suffered to increase beyond their due bounds. ‘Thus the insects that 
attack the roots of the grasses, and, as has been before observed, so 
materially injure our herbage, the wire-worm, the larve of Melolontha 
vulgaris, Tipula oleracea, &c., in ordinary seasons only devour so much 
as is necessary to make room for fresh shoots, and the production of new 
herbage ; in this manner maintaining a constant succession of young 
plants, and causing an annual though partial renovation of our meadows 
and pastures. In the rich fields near Rye in Sussex I particularly 
observed this effect ; and I have since at home remarked, that at certain 
times of the year dead plants may be every where observed, pulled up 
by the cattle as they feed, whose place is supplied by new offsets. So 
that, when in moderate numbers, these insects do no more harm to the 
grass than would the sharp-toothed harrows which it has been sometimes 
advised to apply to hide-bound pastures, and the beneficial operation of 
which in loosening the sub-soil these insect borers closely imitate. 

Nor would it be difficult to show that the ordinary good effects of 
some of those insects, which torment ourselves and our cattle, prepon- 
derate over their evil ones. Mr. Clark is inclined to think that the gentle 
irritation of Gstrus Equi is advantageous to the stomach of the horse 
rather than the contrary. On the same principle it is not improbable that 
the Tabani often act as useful phlebotomists to our full-fed animals ; 
and that the constant motion in which they are kept in summer by the 
attacks of the Stomoxys and other flies may prevent diseases that would 
be brought on by indolence and repletion. And in the case of man 
himself, if I do not go so far as Linné to give the louse the credit of 
preserving full-fed boys from coughs, epilepsy, &c., we may safely regard 
as no small good the stimulus which these, and others of the insect 
assailants of the persons of the dirty and the vicious, afford to personal 
cleanliness and purity. 

I might enlarge greatly upon the foregoing view of the subject, but 
this is unnecessary, as numerous facts will occur in subsequent letters 


1 Sparrman’s Voyage, i. 367. 


+ 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 181 


which you will readily perceive have an intimate bearing upon it; and I 
shall, therefore, proceed to point out the more evident benefits which we 
derive from insects, arranging them under the two great heads of direct 
benefits, and those which are indirect ; beginning with the latter. 

The insects which are indirectly beneficial to us may be considered 
under three points of view; first, as removing various nuisances and 
deformities from the face of nature ; secondly, as destroying other znsects, 
that but for their agency would multiply so as greatly to wyure and annoy 
us; and, thirdly, as supplying food to useful animals, particularly to fish 
and birds. \ 

To advert in the first place to the former. All substances must be 
regarded as nuisances and deformities, when considered with relation to the 
whole, which are deprived of the principle of animation. In this relation 
stand a dead carcass, a dead tree, or a mass of excrement, which are 
clearly incumbrances that it is desirable to have removed; and the office 
of effecting this removal is chiefly assigned to insects, which have been 
justly called the great scavengers of nature. Let us consider their little 
but effective operations in each of their vocations. 

How disgusting to the eye, how offensive to the smell, would be the 
whole face of nature, were the vast quantity of excrement daily falling to 
the earth from the various animals which inhabit it, suffered to remain 
until gradually dissolved by the rain, or decomposed by the elements! 
That it does not thus offend us, we are indebted to an inconceivable host of 
insects which attack it the moment it falls ; some immediately beginning 
to devour it, others depositing in it eggs from which are soon hatched 
larve that concur in the same office with tenfold voracity ; and thus every 
particle of dung, at least of the most offensive kinds, speedily swarms 
with inhabitants which consume all the liquid and noisome particles, 
leaving nothing but the undigested remains, that soon dry, and are scat- 
tered by the winds, while the grass upon which it rested, no longer 
smothered by an impenetrable mass, springs up with increased vigor. 

Numerous are the tribes of insects to which this office is assigned, 
though chiefly, if not entirely, selected from the two orders, Coleoptera 
and Diptera. A large proportion of the genera formed, by different 
authors, from Scarabeus of Linné, viz. Scarabeus, Copris, Ateuchus, 
Sisyphus, Onitis, Onthophagus, Aphodius, and Psammodius ; also His- 
ter, Spheridium ; and amongst the Brachyptera, the majority of the Sta- 
phylinide, many Aleochare, especially of Gravenhorst’s third family, 
many Ocxyteli, and some Omalia, Tachini, and Tachypori, of that author, 
including in the whole many hundred species of beetles, unite their labors 
to effect this useful purpose: and what is remarkable, though they all 
work their way in these filthy masses, and at first can have no paths, yet 
their bodies are never soiled by the ordure they inhabit. Many of these 
insects content themselves with burrowing in the dung alone; but Ateu- 
chus pilularius', a species called in America the Twumble-dung, whose 


1 The Coprion, Cantharus, and Heliocantharus of the ancients was evidently this beetle, 
or one neariy related to it, which is described as rolling backwards large masses of dung, 
and attracted such general attention as to give rise to the proverb Cantharus pilulam. It 
should seem from the name, derived from a word signifying an ass, that the Grecian 
beetle made its pills of asses’ dung; and this is confirmed by a passage in one of the plays 
of Aristophanes, the Irene, where a‘ beetle of this kind is introduced, on which one of the 


16 


* 


182 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


singular manepuvres I shall subsequently have to advegt to, Copris lunaris, 
Geotrupes stercorarius, and many other lamellicorn beetles, make large 
cylindrical holes, often of great depth, under the heap, and there deposit 
their eggs surrounded by a mass of dung in which they have previously 
enveloped them ; thus not only dispersing the dung, but actually burying 
it at the roots of the adjoining plants, and by these means contributing 
considerably to the fertility of our pastures, supplying the constant waste 
by an annual conveyance of fresh dung laid at the very root; by these 
eanals, also, affording a convenient passage for a portion of it when dis- 
solved to be carried thither by the rain. 

The coleopterous insects found in dung inhabit it in their perfect as 
well as imperfect states: but this is not the case with those of the order 
Diptera, whose larve alone find their nutriment in it; the imago, which 
would be suffocated did it attempt to burrow into a material so soft, only 
laying its eggs in the mass. ‘These also are more select in their choice 
than the Coleoptera—not indeed as to delicacy,—but they do not indis- 
criminately oviposit in all kinds, some preferring horse-dung, others swine’s- 
dung, others cow-dung, which seems the most favorite pabulum of all the 
dung-loving insects, and others that of birds.!. The most disgusting of all 
is the rat-tailed larva that inhabits our privies, which changes toa fly 
(Eristalis tenax), somewhat resembling a bee. 

Still more would our olfactory nerves be offended, and our health liable 
to fatal injuries, if the wisdom and goodness of Providence had not pro- 
vided for the removal of another nuisance from our globe—the dead 
carcasses of animals. When these begin to grow putrid, every one knows 
what dreadful miasmata exhale from them, and taint the air we breathe. 
But no sooner does life depart from the body of any creature, at least of 
any which from its size is likely to become a nuisance, than myriads of 
different sorts of insects attack it, and in various ways. First come the 
Histers, and pierce the skin. Next follow the flesh-flies, some, that no 
time may be lost (as Sarcophaga carnaria, &c.), depositing upon it their 
young already hatched ; others (Musca Cesar, &c.) covering it with mil- 
lions of eggs, whence in a day or two proceed innumerable devourers. 
An idea of the despatch made by these gourmands may be gained from 
the combined consideration of their numbers, voracity, and rapid develop- 
ment. One female of S. carnaria will give birth to 20,000 young ; and 
the larve of many flesh-flies, as Redi ascertained, will in twenty-four 
hours devour so much food, and grow so quickly, as to increase their 
weight two-hundred fold! In five days after being hatched, they arrive at 
their full growth and size, which is a remarkable instance of the care of 


characters rides to heaven to petition Jupiter for peace. The play begins with one domestic 
desiring another to feed the Cantharus with some bread, who afterwards orders his com- 
panion to give him another kind of bread made of asses’ dung. 

1 According to M. Robineau Desvoidy, the dung of the badger, which is placed in a 
separate chamber of its subterranean galleries, has its peculiar fly, which he names Leria@ 
melina, the Jarvee of which there feed upon it; and the parent flies never ascend to the 
surface, but constantly reside in this dark and damp abode, and can only be obtained by 
digging intoit. Another fly, his Thelida vespertilionea, in like manner, lives in the larva 
state on the dung of bats deposited by them at the end of the grottoes of D’Arcy-sur-Eure 
more than one hundred toises distant from their entrance; and he describes a third fly, 
Leria mustelina, which he believes to feed on the dung of the weasel, and names other 
distinct species to which the dung of the fox, the rabbit, the water-rat, and the field-mouse 
respectively afford subsistence. (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, x. 255—260.) 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 183 


Providence in fitting them for the part they are destined to act: for if a 
longer time was required for their growth, their food would not be a fit 
aliment for them, or they would be too long in removing the nuisance it is 
given in charge to them to dissipate. hus we see there was some 
ground for Linné’s assertion under M. vomitoria, that three of these flies 
will devour a dead horse as quickly as would a lion. . 

As soon as the various tribes of Muscide have opened the way, and 
devoured the softer parts, a whole host of beetles, Necrophori, Silphe, 
Dermestes, Choleve, and Staphylinida, actively second their labors. 
Wasps and hornets also come in for their portion of the spoil; and even 
ants, which prowl every where, rival their giant competitors in the quantity 
consumed by them; so that in no very long time, especially in warm 
climates, the muscular covering is removed from the skeleton, which is 
then cleansed from all remains of it by the little Corynetes ceruleus and 
ruficollis (which last is so interesting, as having been the means of saving 
the life of Latreille'), and several Nitidule.* Even the horns of animals 
have an appropriate genus (Jrox) which inhabits them, and feeds upon 
their contents. And not only are large animals thus disposed of, even the 
smallest are not suffered long to annoy us. The burying beetle (Necro- . 
phorus Vespillo) inters the bodies of small animals, such as mice, several 
assisting each other in the work?; and those to which they commit their 
eggs afford an ample supply of food to their larve.* Ants also in some 
degree emulate these burying insects, at least they will carry off the car- 
casses of insects into their nests; and 1 once saw some of the horse-ants 
dragging away a half-dead snake of about the size of a goose-quill.® In 
fact in the extensive plains of South America and other tropical regions, 
where ants are both larger and far more numerous than with us, M. Lund 
conceives that they take the place of the Carabide, Silphide, and other 
carnivorous tribes of more temperate climes, there rarely met with, in 
removing all putrefying animal matter. Some insects will even attack 
living animals, and make them their prey, thus contributing to keep them 
within due limits. ‘The common earth-worm is attacked and devoured by 
a centipede (Geophilus electricus). Mr. Sheppard saw one attack a worm 
ten times its own size, round which it twisted itself like a serpent, and 
which it finally mastered and devoured. 

But insects are not only useful in removing and dissipating dead animal 
matter; they are also intrusted with a similar office with respect to the 
vegetable kingdom. The interior of rotten trees is inhabited by the larve 
of a particular kind of crane-fly with pectinated antenne (Ctenophora’), 
and other insects, which there find an appropriate nutriment ; anda similar 


1 See Latr. Gen. i. 275. 

* This property in the carrion insects may be turned to a good account by the compara- 
tive anatomist, who has only to flay the body of one of the smaller animals, anoint it with 
honey, and bury it in an ant-hill; and in a short time he will obtain a perfect skeleton, 
denudated of every fibril of muscle, though with the ligaments and cartilages untouched. 

3 In India, as we learn from Col. Hearsey, a large species of Platynotus replaces the 
Necrophori in their burying habits. 

4 Gleditsch, Abhandlungen, iii. 200. 

° It is to be observed that in our cold climates, during the winter months, when excre- 
ment and putrescent animal matter are not so offensive, they are left to the action of the 
elements, insects being then torpid. 

© Lund in Ann. Sc. Nat. June 1831, quoted in Westwood’s Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 230. 

7 Curtis, Brit. Ent. t. 5. 


184 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


diet is furnished to the grubs of the rose-beetle (Cetonia aurata) by the dead 
leaves and stalks usually to be found in the ant’s nest. Staphylinide, 
Spheridia, and other Coleoptera, are always found under heaps of putrescent 
vegetables ; and an infinite number are to be met with in decomposing fungi, 
which seem to be a kind of substance intermediate between animal and 
vegetable. The Boleti, in particular, have one genus of coleopterous 
insects appropriated to them, and the Lycoperdons another.—Stagnant 
waters, which would otherwise exhale putrid miasmata, and be often the 
cause of fatal disorders, are purified by the innumerable larve of gnats, 
Ephemera, and other insects which live in them and abstract from them all 
the unwholesome part of their contents. This, Linné says, will easily 
appear if any one will make the experiment by filling two vessels with 
putrid water, leaving the larve in one and taking them out of the other; 
for then he will soon find the water that is full of larve pure and without 
any stench, while that which is deprived of them will continue stinking.” 

Benefits equally great are rendered by the wood-destroying insects. 
We indeed, in this country, who find use for ten times more timber than 
we produce, could dispense with their services ; but to estimate them at 
their proper value, as affecting the great system of nature, we should trans- 
port ourselves to tropical climes, or to those under the temperate zones, 
where millions of acres are covered by one interminable forest. How is 
it that these untrodden regions, where thousands of their giant inhabitants 
fall victims to the slow ravages of time, or the more sudden operations of 
lightning and hurricanes, should yet exhibit none of those scenes of ruin and 
desolation that might have been expected, but are always found with the 
verdant characters of youth and beauty? It is to the insect world that 
this great charge of keeping the habitations of the Dryads in perpetual 
freshness has been committed. A century would almost elapse before the 
removal from the face of nature of the mighty ruins of one of the hard- 
wooded tropical trees, by the mere influence of the elements. But how 
speedy its decomposition when their operations are assisted by insects ! 
As soon as a tree is fallen, one tribe attacks its bark’, which is often the 
most indestructible part of it; and thousands of orifices into the solid trunk 
are bored by others. ‘The rain thus insinuates itself into every part, and 
the action of heat promotes the decomposition. Various fungi now take 
possession and assist in the process, which is followed up by the incessant 
attacks of other insects, that feed only upon wood in an incipient state of 
decay. And thus in a few months a mighty mass, which seemed inferior 
in hardness only to iron, is mouldered into dust, and its place occupied 
by younger trees full of life and vigor. The insects to which this duty is 
intrusted have been already mentioned in a former letter; but none of 
them do their business so expeditiously or effectually as the Termites, 
which ply themselves in such numbers and so unremittingly, that Mr. 
Smeathman assures us they will in a few weeks destroy and carry away 


1 Surely Mr. Marsham’s name for this genus, Bo/etaria, is much more proper than that 
of Fabricius. Mycetophagus (Agaric-eater), since these insects seldom eat agarics. 

2 (Econ. Nat. Amen. Ac. ii. 50. Stillingfleet’s Tracts, 122. 

3 Maupertuis observes, that in Lapland he saw many birch trees lying on the ground, 
which had probably been there for a very long time, with the bark entire, though the wood 
was decayed. Hence we may probably infer, that in that country there are few or none of 
the bark-boring insects. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 185 


the trunks of large trees, without leaving a particle behind; and in places 
where, two or three years before, there has been a populous town, if the 
inhabitants, as is frequently the case, have chosen to abandon it, there 
shall be a very thick wood, and not the vestige of a post to be seen. 


I observed in a former letter, that the devastations of insects are notthe 
same in every season, their power of mischief being evident only at 
certain times, when Providence, by permitting an unusual increase of 
their numbers, gives them a commission to lay waste any particular coun- 
try or district. ‘The great agents in preventing this increase, and keeping 
the noxious species within proper limits, are other insects ; and to these | 
shall now call your attention. 

Numerous are the tribes upon which this important task devolves, and 
incalculable are the benefits which they are the means of bestowing upon 
us; for to them we are indebted, or rather to Providence who created them 
for this purpose, that our crops and grain, our cattle, our fruit and forest- 
trees, our pulse and flowers, and ofan verdant covering of the earth, 
are not totally destroyed. Of these insects, so friendly to man, some 
exercise their destructive agency solely while in the larva state; others in 
the perfect state only ; others in both these states; and, lastly, others 
again in all the three states of larva, pupa, and imago. For order’s sake, 
and to give you a more distinct view of the subject, I shall say something 
on each separately. 

The first, those which are insectivorous only in their larva state, may 
be further subdivided into parasites and tmparasites, meaning by the 
former term those that feed upon a living insect, and only destroy it when 
they have attained their full growth; and by the latter, those that prey 
upon insects already dead, or that kill them in the act of devouring them. 

The tmparasitic insect devourers chiefly belong to the Hymenoptera 
order; and though it is in the larva state that their prowess is exhibited, 
the task of providing the prey is usually left to the female, of which each 
species for the most part selects a particular kind of insect. ‘Thus many 
species of Cerceris and the splendid Chryside or golden wasps feed upon 
insects of their own order. One of the latter (Parnopes incarnata) com- 
mits her eggs to the progeny of Bembex rostrata: another (Chrysis biden- 
tata) attacks the young of Epipone spinipes. 

Bembex and Mellinus confine themselves to Diptera, the former preying 
upon Eristalis tenax, Bombylii, and the like’; the latter, amongst others, 
ridding us of the troublesome Stomowys calcitrans. One of these last I 
have observed stationed on dung watching for flies, which, when seized, 
she carried to her burrow. The numerous species of Crabro Fab. also 
store up chiefly dipterous insects in their cells, some confining themselves 
to one and the same species, others apparently taking any that offer. 

Epipone spinipes, belonging to the family of Wasps, feeds upon certain 
green apod larve, of which the female deposits ten or twelve with each 
egg. ‘The common sand-wasp (Ammophila vulgaris) destroys caterpillars 
of a larger size, and most of the other Vespoid and Sphecoid Hymenop- 
tera, viz. Trypoxylon, Philanthus, Larra, &c. assist in this great work. 

Pompilus, to which genus probably several species mentioned by Reau- 


* Latreille, Odservations nouvelles sur les Hyménoptéres. Annal. de Mus. 11. 


16* 


* 


186 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


mur as preying on these insects should be referred, has it in charge to 
keep the number of spiders within due bounds: and some sand-wasps lend 
their aid. One of these last, mentioned by Catesby (Sphex ceruleus), 
has been known to seize a spider eight times its own weight. Another 
species of this genus, which is common in the Isle of France, attacks an 
insect still more difficult, one would think, to turn to its purpose, the all- 
devouring Blatta, or cockroach, and is therefore one of the great benefac- 
tors to mankind. When this insect perceives a Blatta (called there 
Kakerlac and Cancrelas) it stops immediately: both animals eye each 
other; but in an instant the sand-wasp darts upon its prey, seizes it by the 
muzzle with its strong jaws, and, bending its abdomen underneath it, 
pierces it with its fatal sting. Sure of its victim, it now walks or flies 
away, leaving the poison to work its effect! but in a short time returns, 
and, finding it deprived of power to make resistance, seizes it again by the 
head, and drags it away, walking backwards to deposit it in a hole or 
chink of a wall.” . 

Grasshoppers are the prey of another sand-wasp, supposed to be the 
Sphex pensylvanica of Linné, a native of North America, each of which 
in its larva state devours three of a large green species with which its 
mother has provided it. 

From none of the imparasitic insectivorous larve do we derive more 
advantage than from those which devour the destructive Aphides, whose 
ravages, as we have seen above, are more detrimental to us in this island 
than those of any other insect. A great variety of species of different 
orders and genera are employed to keep them within due limits. There 
is a beautiful genus of four-winged flies, whose wings resemble the finest 
lace, and whose eyes are often as brilliant as burnished metals (Hemero- 
bius), the larve of which, Reaumur, from their being insatiable devourers 
of them, has named the lions of the Aphides. The singular pedunculated 
eggs from which these larve proceed, I shall describe when we come to 
treat upon the eggs of insects ; the larve themselves are furnished with a 
pair of long crooked mandibles resembling horns, which terminate in a 
sharp point, and, like those of the ant-lion, are perforated, serving the 
insect instead of a mouth; for through this orifice the nutriment passes 
down into the stomach. When amongst the Aphides, like wolves in a 
sheep-fold, they make dreadful havoc: half a minute suffices them to suck 
the largest; and the individuals of one species clothe themselves, like 
Hercules, with the spoils of their hapless victims. 

Next in importance to these come the aphidivorous flies (many species 
of Syrphide), whose grubs are armed with a singular mandible, furnished 
like a trident with three points, with which they transfix their prey. They 
may often be seen laid at their ease under a leaf or upon a twig, environed 
by such hosts of Aphides, that they can devour hundreds without chang- 
ing their station ; and their silly helpless prey, who are provided with no 
means of defence, so far from thinking of escaping, frequently walk over 
the back of their enemy, and put themselves in his way. When disposed 
to feed, he fixes himself by his tail, and, being blind, gropes about on 
every side, as the Cyclops did for Ulysses and his companions, till he 


1 Nat. Hist. of Carolina, ii. 105. 2 Reaum. vi. 282. St. Pierre’s Voyage, 72. 
3 Bartram in Philos. Trans. xvi. 126. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 187 


touches one, which he immediately transfixes with his trident, elevates into 
the air, that he may not be disturbed by its struggles, and soon devours. 
The havoc which these grubs make amongst the Aphides is astonishing. 
It was but last week that I observed the top of every young shoot of the 
currant-trees in my garden curled up by myriads of these insects. On 
examining them this day, not an individual remained; but beneath each 
leaf are three or four full-fed larve of aphidivorous flies, surrounded with 
heaps of the skins of the slain, the trophies of their successful warfare ; 
and the young shoots, whose progress has been entirely checked by the 
abstraction of sap, are again expanding vigorously. 

But even these serviceable insects must yield the palm to the lady-bird 
or lady-cow (Coccinella), the favorite of our childhood, which, as well as 
most of its congenors, in the larva state, feeds entirely on Aphides' ; and 
the havoc made amongst them may be conceived from the myriads upon 
myriads of these little interesting animals, which are often to be seen 
in years when the plant-louse abounds. In 1807 the shore at Brighton, 
and all the watering-places on the south coast, was literally covered with 
them, to the great surprise, and even alarm, of the inhabitants, who were 
ignorant that their little visitors were emigrants from the neighboring hop- 
grounds, where in their larva state each had slain his thousands and tens 
of thousands of the Aphis, which, under the name of the Fly, so frequently 
blasts the hopes of the hop-grower. It is fortunate that in most countries 
the children have taken these friendly Coccinelle under their protection. 

In France they regard them as sacred to the Virgin, and call them 
Vaches a Dieu, Bétes de lay Vierge, &c.; and with us, commiseration 
for the hard fate of a mother, whose “ house is on fire and children at 
home,” insures them kind treatment and liberty. Even the hop-growers 
are becoming sensible of their services, and, as I am informed, hire boys 
to prevent birds from destroying them. If we could but discover a mode 
of increasing these insects at will, we might not only, as Dr. Darwin has 
suggested, clear our hot-houses of Aphides by their means, but render 
our crops of hops much more certain than they now are. Even without 
this knowledge nothing is more easy, as I have experienced, than to clear 
a plant or small tree by placing upon it several larve of Coccinelle or of 
aphidivorous flies collected from less valuable vegetables. 

Lastly, to close this list of imparasitic insectivorous larve, I may mention 
those of Geoffrey’s genus Volucella, so remarkable for their radiated anus, 
which live in the nests of humble bees (V. bombylans), braving the fury 
of their stings and devouring their young; those of another species of the 
same genus (V. zonaria Meig.), which MM. de St. Forgeau and Serville 
have ascertained to live in wasps’ nests and destroy great numbers of their 
larve?; and the ant-lion (Myrmeleon) and Reaumur’s improperly named 
worm-lion (Leptis), whose singular stratagems will be detailed in a subse- 
quent letter, both of which destroy numerous insects that are so unfortu- 
nate as to fall into their toils. 


1 The larve of some species of Coccinelle feed, according to Prof. D. Reich, solely on 
the leaves of plants; as that of C. hieroglyphica, which eats the leaves of common heath 
( Erica vulgaris) after the manner of the larvze of Lepidoptera. Der Gesellschaft naturf. Fr. 
in Berlin Mag. &c. iii. 294. The larva of Coccinella Argus, Scriba (C. 11-maculata Fab.), 
in like manner, Prof. Audouin found to feed on the leaves of the common Bryonia. (West- 
wood, Mod. Classif. of Ins. i. 397.) * Macquart, Dipteres, i. 482. 


188 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


The parasitic larve, an extremely numerous tribe, gust next be consid- 
ered. These chiefly belong to the order Hymenoptera, and were included 
by Linné under his vast genus Jchneumon, so named from the analogy 
between their services and those of the Egyptian Ichneumons (Vwerra 
Ichneumon), the former as destroyers of insects, being equally important 
with the latter as devourers of serpents, the eggs of crocodiles, &c. 

The habits of the whole of this tribe’, which properly includes several 
families (Ichneumonidae, Chalcidide, &c.) and a great number of distinct 
genera, are similar. They all oviposit in living insects, chiefly while in 
the larva state, sometimes while pupe (Misocampus Puparum) ; at others 
while in the egg state (Pteromalus ovulorum, and bifasciatus, Chrysolam- 
pus tristis, &c.). The eggs thus deposited soon hatch into grubs, which 
immediately attack their victim, and in the end insure its destruction. 
The number of eggs committed to each individual varies according to its 
size, and that of the grubs which are to spring from them; being in most 
cases one only, but in others amounting to some hundreds. 

From the observations hitherto made by entomologists, the great body 
of the Ichneumon tribe is principally employed in keeping within their 
proper limits the infinite host of lepidopterous larve, destroying, however, 
many insects of other orders; and, perhaps, if the larve of these last fell 
equally under our observation with those of the former, we might discover 
that few exist uninfested by their appropriate parasite. Such is the activ- 
ity and address of the Ichneumonidans, and their minute allies (Pupivora 
Latr.), that scarcely any concealment, except, perhaps, the waters, can 
secure their prey from them; and neither bulk, courage, nor ferocity avail 
to terrify them from effecting their purpose. ‘They attack the ruthless 
spider in his toils ; they discover the retreat of the little bee, that for safety 
bores deep into timber; and though its enemy Ichneumon cannot enter its 
cell, by means of her long ovipositor she reaches the helpless grub, which 
its parent vainly thought secured from every foe, and deposits in it an egg, 
which produces a larva that destroys it.2_ In vain does the destructive 
Cecidomyia of the wheat conceal its larve within the glumes that so 
closely cover the grain; three species of these minute benefactors of our 
race, sent in mercy by Heaven, know how to introduce their eggs into 
them, thus preventing the mischief they would otherwise occasion, and 
saving mankind from the horrors of famine.’ In vain, also, the Cynips 
by its magic touch produces the curious excrescences on various trees and 
plants, called galls, for the nutriment and defence of its progeny: the 
parasite species attached to it discovers its secret chamber, pierces its wall, 
however thick, and commits the destroying egg to its offspring. Even 
the clover-weevil is not secure within the legumen of that plant; nor the 
wire-worm in the earth, from their ichneumonidan foes. I have received 
from the late Mr. Markwick that of the former, and Mr. Paul has shown 
me the destroyer of the latter, which belongs to Latreille’s genus Procto- 
trupes. Others are not more secured by the repulsive nature of the 


1 Latreille denominates this family, as he calls it, Pupivora: if by this he alludes to their 
devouring the young of insects, from the classical meaning of the word pupa, the term is 
very proper; but this should be borne in mind, as the majority of readers would imagine it 
to refer to the pupa state of insects, in which they are not so generally devoured by their 
parasites. ard. ¢ . 

* Marsham in Lian. Trans. iii. 26. 3 See above, pp. 126, 127. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 189 


substance they inhabit ; for two species at least of Ichneumon' know how 
to oviposit it in stercorarious larve without soiling their wings or bodies. 

The ichneumonidan parasites are‘either external or internal. Thus the 
species above alluded to, which attacks spiders, does not live within their 
bodies, but remains on the outside?; and the larva of Ophion luteum, 
which adheres by one end to the shell of the bulbiferous egg that produéed 
it, does not enter the caterpillar of Euprepia villica, the moth upon which 
it feeds. But the great majority of these animals oviposit within the 
body of the insect to which they are assigned, from whence, after having 
consumed the interior and become pupa, they emerge in their perfect state. 
An idea of the services rendered to us by those Ichneumons which prey 
upon noxious larve may be formed from the fact, that out of thirty indi- 
viduals of the common cabbage caterpillar (the larve of Pontia Brassica) 
which Reaumur put into a glass to feed, twenty-five were fatally pierced 
by an Ichneumon (Microgaster globatus*). And if we compare the 
myriads of caterpillars that often attack our cabbages and brocoli with the 
small number of butterflies of this species which usually appear, we may 
conjecture that they are commonly destroyed in some such proportion—a 
circumstance that will lead us thankfully to acknowledge the goodness of 
Providence, which, by providing such a check, has prevented the utter 
destruction of the Brassica genus, including some of our most esteemed 
and useful vegetables. 

The parasites are not wholly confined to the order Hymenoptera: a 
considerable number are also found amongst the tribe of flies, many of the 
species of the Dipterous genera Tachina Meig.; and those separated from 
it (as Echinomyia Nemorea, &c.), as well as of Anthrax, and other 
genera depositing their eggs in caterpillars and other larve, often in such 
great numbers, that from a larve of Sphinz atropos, bred by M. Serville, 
and which had sufficient strength to assume the pupa state, not fewer than 
eighty flies of Senometopia atropivora came out of it.® Many beetles 
also are parasitic in their larve state, as the singular Ripiphorus para- 
doxus, which is found in the nests of wasps; those of the genus Svtarvs, 
which are found in the nests of wild bees of the genus Anthophora®; and 
those of Brachytarsus scabrosus, which feed on Coccide’, &c. 

1 Alysia Manducator ; and another species allied to Alomyia Debellator, which I have 
named A. Stercorator. 2 De Geer, ii. 863. 3 Ibid. 851—855. 4 Reaum. ii. 419. 

5 Macquart, Dipteres, ii. 105. Comp. De Geer, i. 196, vi. 14.24. Reaum. ii, 440—444. 

8 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, viii. Brit. xvii. xlvii. Much obscurity exists as to the econo- 
my of these insects, chiefly in consequence of the curious facts observed by my friend M. 
Pecchioli of Pisa with regard to his new species Sitaris solieri, described by him in the Ann. 
Soc. Ent. de France, viii. 5. 27. He always found both sexes of this species, even in distant 
localities, on plants of rosemary ; and these plants, when M. Audouin examined them with 
him near Pisa in 1835, were covered with eggs, which the former recognized as altogether 
similar to those of Sitaris humeralis, with which he was well acquainted. As the species of 
Sitaris are kuown to be found in the nests of different Hymenoptera, and particularly in 
those of a wild bee (Anthophora) on the larve of which their larve are probably parasitic, 
the question occurs, with what view these eggs were placed on the rosemary? The most 
plausible supposition perhaps would seem to be that after the eggs are hatched the larve 
attach themselves, like the supposed larve of Meloe ( Pediculus Melitte K.) to which they 
are related, to the Anthophora, frequenting the rosemary for honey, and are thus conveyed 
into their cells; but nothing certain can be inferred on this head till the contradictory state- 
ments as to these last-named larve are cleared up; and it seems as yet almost equally 
doubtful, (as it is also in the case of the other parasitic coleopterous genera Horia, Ripi- 
phorus, and Zonitis,) whether the larve are parasitic on the larve of the insects in whose 


cells they are found, or on their stored-up food. 
7 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins, i. 332. 


190 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


Generally speaking, parasitic larve do not attack ingects in their perfect 
state; but to this rule there are several exceptions. M. Dufour found in 
a beetle (Cassida viridis) a parasitic larva, from which he bred a fly of 
the genus Tachina Meig. (Cassidemyia Macq.) ; and also in a field-bug 
(Pentatoma grisea), from which proceeded another fly (Ocyptera bicol- 
or)! ; and Latreille, Dufour, and other entomologists have confirmed the 
discovery of Baumhauer, that the larve of flies of the genus Conops live 
in humble bees, which M. Robineau-Desvoidy has seen pursued by them, 
apparently to deposit their eggs on them.” The larve of a beetle (Simbius 
Blattarum) is parasitic in the bodies of Blatta americana on board of 
ships, and M. Audouin found Coccinella 17-punctata, to be subject to the 
parasitic attack of Microctonus terminalis Wesmael, and Enerytus flami- 
nius Dalman.? 

The order also of Strepstptera appears to be wholly parasitic ; but these 
extraordinary animals are found only upon Hymenoptera in their perfect 
state, and do not appear to destroy the insects upon which they prey, but 
probably prevent their breeding. The species at present known are form- 
ed into four genera, Xenos Rossi; Stylops Kirby ; Elenchus Curtis; and 
Halictophagus Dale. The first is found in different species of wasps 
(Vespa, Polistes, Odynerus, and also of Sphex) ; the second in the genus 
separated from Melitta K. under the name of Andrena, in upwards of 
fourteen species of which Mr. Pickering has found them; the third in 
Polistes?; and the fourth in Halictus (Melitta K.); but it is probable, 
from the fact of M. L. Dufour’s having also found a larva of one of these 
insects between the abdominal segments of Ammophila Sabulosa, that 
many other hymenopterous insects will be found to be infested with them.‘ 

The next description of insect destroyers are those which devour them 
in their first and last states. No beetles are more common after the sum- 
mer is confirmed than the species of the genus Telephorus. Preysler in- 
foms us that the grub of T. fuscus destroys a great many other larve®; and 
I have observed the imago devour these and also Diptera. Linné has 
with justice denominated the Cicindele the tigers of insects. Though 
decorated with brilliant colors, they prey upon the whole insect race; their 
formidable jaws which cross each other are armed with fearful fangs, show- 
ing to what use they are applicable; and the extreme velocity with which 


1 Macquart, Dipteres, ii. 69. 2 Ibid. ii. 23. Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 561. 

3 Westwood, Mod. Class. i. 295. 397. 

4 Kirby, Mon. Ap. Ang. ii 110. 113. and in Linn. Trans. xi. 86. Westwood’s Mod. Class. 
of Ias. ii. 23883—305., to which last the reader is referred for a full and very interesting ac- 
count of the facts hitherto recorded respecting these remarkable insects, and references to 
the various works in which they occur. My friend G. H. K. Thwaites, Esq. has had the 
singular good fortune, which has perhaps occurred to no other entomologist, of seeing on 
the wing in May, 1838, not merely a single stylops or two, but a small swarm of at least 
twenty, and in as singular a situation, the garden of his residence, situated in the suburbs 
of the populous city of Bristol. This was most probably owing to the circumstance of the 
garden having had brought into it a quantity of fresh earth which apparently had been dug 
from some bank or pathway, containing many of the nests of Andrena convexiuscula, which 
also abounded 1 the garden at the same time, and of which Mr. Thwaites captured several, 
all containing the larva of a Stylops (in one instance of three), or evident signs of a Stylops 
having escaped from them. These singular little animals, whose economy and systematic 
place are equally perplexing, Mr. Thwaites informs us “are exceedingly graceful in their 
flight, taking long sweeps as if carried along by a gentle breeze,” which, and their large 
expanse of wing, give them an appearance in flying very different from that of any other 
insect. (Thwaites in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. iii. 67.) 

5 Preys. Bomisch. Insekt. 59. 61. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 191 


they can either run or fly, renders hopeless any attempt to elude their 
pursuit. Their larve are also equally tremendous with the imago, having 
eight eyes, four on each side, seated on a lateral elevation of the head, 
two above and two very minute below, which look like those of spiders, 
and besides their threatening jaws armed with a strong internal tooth, 
being furnished with a pair of spines resembling somewhat the sting of a 
scorpion, which stand erect upon the back of the abdomen, and give 
them a most ferocious aspect. This last apparatus, according to Clairville, 
serves the purpose of an anchor for retaining them at any height in their 
deep cells.!. Most of the aquatic beetles, at least the Gyrini and Dytisci, 
prey upon other insects both in their first and final state. The larve of 
the latter have long been observed and described under the name of Squille, 
and are remarkable for having their mandibles adapted for suction like 
those of Hemerobius and Myrmeleon; but they are not, like them, 
deprived of a mouth, being able to devour by mastication as well as by 
suction. Another tribe of this order which abounds in species, those 
predaceous beetles which form Linné’s great genus Carabus (Eutrechina?), is 
universally insectivorous. One of the most destructive is the grub of a 
very beautiful species, an English specimen of which would be a great 
acquisition to your cabinet, it being one of our rarest insects*, | mean Calo- 
soma Sycophanta. ‘This animal takes up its station in the nests of Cnetho- 
campa processionea and other moths, and sometimes fills itself so full with 
these caterpillars, which we cannot handle or even approach without inju- 
ry, as to be rendered incapable of motion, and appear ready to burst. 
Another beautiful insect of this tribe, Carabus auratus, known in France 
by the name of Vinaigrier, is supposed to destroy more cockchafers than 
all their other enemies, attacking and killing the females at the moment of 
oviposition, and thus preventing the birth of thousands of young grubs.* 
Lastly come the Brachyptera, many of which prey upon insects as well 
as on putrescent substances. Mr. Lehmann tells us that some of them 
are very useful in destroying a weevil (Apion flavifemoratum*), the great 
enemy of our crops of clover seed. 

Amongst the devourers of insects in their perfect state only, must be 
ranked a few of the social tribes, ants, wasps, and hornets. The first- 
mentioned indefatigable and industrious creatures kill and carry off great 
numbers of insects of every description to their nests, and prodigious are 
their efforts in this work. I have seen an ant dragging a wild bee many 
times bigger than itself; and there was brought to me, this very morning, 
while writing this letter, an Elater quite alive and active, which three or 
four ants, in spite of its struggles, were carrying off. An observing friend 
of mine®, who was some time in Antigua, informed me that in that island, 
a kind of ant which construct their nests in the roofs of houses, when they 
meet with any animal larger than they can carry off alive, such as a cock- 


1 Entom. Helvetique, ii. 158. 

® In the former edition of this work (Vol. IV. p. 392.), this tribe is denominated Eupo- 
dina ; but as this seems too near to M. Latreille’s Eupoda, belonging to a different tribe of 
beetles, we have substituted the above name, which means the same. 

3 One was taken at Aldeburgh in Suffolk by Dr. Crabbe, the celebrated poet; another by 
a young lady at Southwold, which is now in the cabinet of Joseph Hooker, Esq.; and a 
third by a boy at Norwich, crawling up a wall, which was purchased of him by S. 
Wilkin, Esq. 4 Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 181. 

5 Linn. Trans. vi. 149, Kirby, Ibid. ix. 42, 43. ® The late R. Kittoe, Esq. 


192 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


roach, &c., will hold it by the legs so that it cannot move, till some of 
them get upon it and despatch it, and then, with incredible labor, carry 
it up to their nest. Madame Merian, in her account of the periodical 
ants mentioned to you before, and which is confirmed by Azara’, notices 
their clearing the houses of cock-roaches and similar animals ; and Myr- 
mica omnivora is very useful in Ceylon in destroying the former insect, 
the larger ant, and the white ant.” 

You are not perhaps accustomed to regard wasps and hornets as of 
any use to us; but they certainly destroy an infinite number of flies and 
other annoying insects. The year 1811 was remarkable for the small 
number of wasps, though many females appeared in the spring, scarcely 
any neuters being to be seen in the autumn®; and probably in consequence 
of this circumstance, flies in many places were so extremely numerous as 
to be quite a nuisance. Reaumur has observed that in France, the 
butchers are very glad to have wasps attend their stalls, for the sake of 
their services in driving away the flesh-fly ; and, if we may believe the 
author of Hector St. John’s American Letters, the farmers in some parts 
of the United States are so well aware of their utility in this respect, as 
to suspend in their sitting-rooms a hornet’s nest, the occupants of which 
prey upon the flies without molesting the family. 

There are other devourers of insects in their perfect state, the manners 
and food of whose larve we are unacquainted with. St. Pierre speaks 
of a lady-bird, but it probably belonged to some other genus, of a fine 
violet color, with a head like a ruby, which he saw carry off a butterfly.* 
Linné informs us that Clerus formicarius devours Anobium pertinax. A 
fly related to Panorpa communis appears created to instil terror into the 
pitiless hearts of the tyrants of our lakes and pools—the all-devouring 
Libellulina.’ The Asili also, which are always upon the chase, seize 
insects with their anterior legs and suck them with their haustellum. The 
cognate genus Dioctria, particularly D. elandica, prey upon Hymenoptera, 
by some unknown means, instantaneously killing the insect they seize. 
Many species also of Empis, whose haustellum resembles the beak of a 
bird, carry off in it Tipularia and other small Diptera ; and, what is 
remarkable, you can seldom take these insects in coitu, but the female has 
a gnat, some fly, or sometimes a beetle, in her mouth. Can this be to 
deposit her eggs in, as soon as they are impregnated by the male? or is 
it designed for the nuptial feast? Even Scatophaga stercoraria and 
scybalaria, and probably many others of the same tribe, feed upon small 
flies, though their proboscis does not seem so well adapted for animal as 
for vegetable food. 

The most unrelenting devourers of insects appear to be those belonging 
to my fourth division, which attack them under every form. ‘These begin 
the work of destruction when they are larve, and continue it during the 
whole of their existence. The earwig that haunts every close place in 
our gardens, and defiles whatever it enters, probably in some degree makes 
up for its ravages by diminishing the number of other insects. ‘The 
cowardly and cruel Mantis, which runs away from an ant, will destroy in 

1 Voyages, i. 185. 2 Percival’s Ceylon, 307. 

3 Mr. Knight made the same observation in 1806, and supposes the scarcity of neuters 


arose from the want of males to impregnate the females. Philos. Trans. 1807, p. 243. 
4 St. Pierre, Voy. 72. 5 Lesser, L. i. 263. note. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 193 


abundance helpless flies, using its anterior tibia, which with the thigh form 
a kind of forceps, to seize its prey. The water-scorpions (Nepa, Ra- 
natra, and Nawcoris), whose fore-legs are made like those of the Mantis, 
the water-boatman (Notonecta), which always swims upon its back, and 
Stgara, all live by rapine, and prey upon aquatic insects. Some of this 
tribe are so savage that they seem to love destruction for its own sake. 
One (Nepa cinerea) which was put into a basin of water with several 
young tadpoles killed them all without attempting to eat one. 

Those remarkable genera of the tribe of water-bugs (Hydrocorise 
Latr.), which glide over the surface of every pool with such rapidity, 
being gifted with the faculty of walking upon the water, Hydrometra, 
Velia, and Gerris, subsist also upon aquatic insects. A large number of 
the land-bugs (Geocorise Latr.) plunge their rostrum into the larve of 
Lepidoptera, and suck the contents of their bodies; and Reduvius per- 
sonatus, which ought on that account to be encouraged, is particularly 
fond of the bed-bug, as, according to Kuhn, is Pentatoma bidens, six or 
eight of which, shut up in a room swarming with the bed-bug, for several 
weeks, completely extirpated the latter.’ 

But of all the insects that are locomotive and pursue their prey in every 
state, none are greater enemies of their fellow tribes than the Libellulina, 
and none are provided with more powerful and singular instruments of 
assault. In the larva and pupa states, during which they live in the 
water and prey upon aquatic insects, they are furnished with two pair of 
strong jaws, covered by a kind of mask armed with a pair of forceps or 
claws, which the animal has the power of pushing from it to catch any 
thing at a distance.2 When an aquatic insect passes within its reach, it 
suddenly darts forth the mask, opens the forceps, seizes the unfortunate 
victim, and brings it within the action of its jaws. 

When they assume the imago state, their habits do not, like those of 
the white ants, become more mild and gentle, but, on the contrary, are 
more sanguinary and rapacious than ever; so that the name given to 
them in England, “ Dragon-flies,’ seems much more applicable than 
“ Demoiselles,” by which the French distinguish them. ‘Their ‘motions, 
it is true, are’ light and airy ; their dress is silky, brilliant, and variegated, 
and trimmed with the finest lace: so far the resemblance holds ; but their 
purpose, except at the time of love, is always destruction, in which surely 
they have no resemblance to the ladies. I have been much amused by 
observing the proceedings of a species not uncommon here, Anex Impe- 
rator of Dr. Leach. It keeps wheeling round and round, and backwards 
and forwards, over a considerable portion of the pool it frequents. If 
one of the same species comes in its way, a battle ensues ; if other species 
of Libellulina presume to approach, it drives them away, and it is con- 
tinually engaged in catching case-worm flies and other insects (for the 
species of this tribe all catch their prey when on the wing, and their large 
eyes seem given them to enable them the more readily to do this,) that 
fly over the water, pulling off their wings with great adroitness and devour- 
ing in an instant the contents of the body. From the number of insects 


1 Naturforscher, St. 6. and Fallen, Hemipt. Suec. 142. quoted by Westwood, Mod. Class. of 
Ins. ii. 486. 
* Reaum. vi. 400. t. 36—38. 


17 


194 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


how useful they must be in prevénting too great a multiplication of the 
other species of the class to which they belong. - 

Lastly, under this head, not to dwell upon some other apterous genera, 
devourers of insects, as the scorpion and centipede, Phalangium, Galeodes, 
must be enumerated the whole world of Spiders, extremely numerous both 
in species and individuals, which subsist entirely upon insects, spreading 
with infinite art and skill their nets and webs to arrest the flight of the 
heedless and unwary summer tribes that fill the air, which are hourly 
caught by thousands in their toils; one of them (Theridium 13-guttatum 
Rossi), we are told, even attacking the redoubted Scorpion.’ 

So much for the insect benefactors to whom it is given in charge to keep 
the animals of their own class within their proper limits; and I cannot 
doubt that you will recognize the goodness of the Great Parent in provid- 
ing such an army of counter-checks to the natural tendency of almost all 
insects to incalculable increase. But before I quit this subject I must call 
your attention to what may be denominated cannibal insects, since, in spite 
of those declaimers who would persuade us that man is the only animal 
that preys upon his own species”, a large number of insects are guilty of 
the same offence. Reaumur tells us, that having put into a glass vessel 
twenty caterpillars of the same species, which he was careful to supply 
with their appropriate food, they nevertheless devoured each other until 
one only survived® ; and De Geer relates several similar instances.4 ‘The 
younger larve of Calosoma Sycophanta often take advantage of the help- 
less inactivity into which the gluttony of their maturer comrades has thrown 
them, and from mere wantonness, it should seem, when in no need of 
other food, pierce and devour them. A ferocity not less savage exists 
amongst the Mantes. These insects have their fore-legs of a construction 
not unlike that of a sabre; and they can as dexterously cleave their an- 
tagonist in two, or cut off his head at a stroke, as the most expert hussar. 
In this way they often treat each other, even the sexes fighting with the 
most savage animosity. Rdésel endeavored to rear several specimens of 
M. Religiosa, but always failed, the stronger constantly devouring the 
weaker.®* This ferocious propensity the Chinese children have, according 
to Mr. Barrow, employed as a source of barbarous amusement, selling to 
their comrades bamboo cages containing each a Mantis, which are put 
together to fight. You will think it singular that both in Europe and 
Africa these cruel insects have obtained a character for gentleness of dis- 
position, and even sanctity. This has arisen from the upright or sitting 
position, with the fore legs bent, assumed in watching for their prey, which 
the vulgar have supposed to be a praying posture, and hence adopted the 
belief that a child or traveler that had lost his road would be guided by 
taking one of these pious insects in his hand, and observing what way it 


1 Thiebaut de Berneaud’s Voyage to Elba, p. 31. 
a “Even Tiger felland sullen Bear 
Their likeness and their lineage spare. 
Man only mars kind Nature’s plan, 
And turns the fierce pursuit on Man!”’ 
Scott’s Rokeby. canto iii. 1. 

3 Reaumer, ii. 413. This habit is well known to our practical Lepidopterists, who have 
given the name of the Monster Caterpillar to one of these cannibal species ; a memoir upon 
which by Mr. Thrupp was lately read before the Entomological Society. 

4 De Deer, i. 533. iii. 361. v. 400. vi. 91. 5 Rosel, iv. 96. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 195 


pointed. Mantis fausta, though not as some suppose worshipped by the 
Hottentots, is yet greatly esteemed by them, and they regard the person 
upon whom it alights as highly fortunate. A similar unnatural ferocity is 
exhibited by Gryllus campestris, of which, having put the sexes into a 
box, I found on examining them that the female had begun to make her 
meal off her companion. The malign aspect of the scorpion leadswus to 
expect from it unnatural cruelty, aud its manners fulfil this expectation. 
Maupertuis put a hundred scorpions together, and a general and murder- 
ous battle immediately began. Almost all were massacred in the space of 
a few days without distinction of age or sex, and devoured by the survi- 
vors. He informs us also that they often devour their own offspring as 
soon as they are born.? Spiders are equally ferocious in their habits, 
fighting sanguinary battles, which sometimes end in the death of both 
combatants ; and the females do not yield to the Mantes in their unnatural 
cruelty to their mates. Woe be to the male spider that, after an union, 
does not with all speed make his escape from the fangs of his partner! 
Nay, De Geer saw one that, in the midst of his preparatory caresses was 
seized by the object of his attentions, enveloped by her in a web, and 
then devoured—a sight which, he observes, filled him with horror and 
indignation.* 


Such are the benefits which we derive from the insects that keep each 
other in check. Here they are the destroyers to which we are chiefly 
indebted ; but we are in another point of view under nearly equal obliga- 
tions to the destroyed ; for they are insects, either wholly or in part, that 
form the food of some of our most esteemed fishes, and of birds that are 
not more valuable to us as articles for the table, than as the songsters that 
enliven our groves. But before proceeding to the details which this view 
of the subject involves, I ought not to omit pointing out to you that many 
quadrupeds, which, though not all of direct utility to us, are doubtless of 
importance in the scale of being, derive a considerable part of their sub- 
sistence from insects. 

The harmless hedgehog and the mole, to begin at the lower end of the 
series, are both said to be insectivorous*; the latter devouring large quanti- 
ties of the wire-worms. ‘The greedy swine will root up whole acres in 
search of the grubs of cock-chafers, of which they are very fond; and 
perhaps the good they do is greater than the harm, if their attack be 
confined to grass that having been undermined by these grubs would soon 
die: they also dig up the larve of the destructive Cicada septendecim, 
called the American locust®, on which, when in their perfect state, the 
squirrels are said to grow fat.© The badger, Lesser informs us, will eat 
beetles: and its kinsman the bear has the character of being very fond of 
ants and of honey ; which last is also said to be a favorite article with the 
fox, who has sometimes the audacity to overturn bee-hives, and even to 
attack wasps’ nests in search of it. He will also eat beetles. 

Sparrman has given an amusing account of the honey-ratel (Vivella 
mellivora), which has a particular instinct enabling it to discover bees, and 


1 Thunberg’s Travels, ii. 66. 
2 De Geer, vii. 335. 3 Ibid, 180. 4 Bingley, ii. 374. 
5 Bingley, iii. 27. 6 Collinson in Philos. Trans. 1763. 


196 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


attack them in their entrenchments. Near sunset the ratel will sit and 
hold one of his paws before his eyes, in order to get a distinct view of the 
object of his pursuit; and when, in consequence of his peering about in 
this manner, he sees any bees flying, he knows that at this time of the 
day they are making for their habitations, whither he follows them, and so 
attains his end.!. Another species of Viverra (V. prehensilis) is also 
reputed to be an eager insect hunter. The young armadillos feed on a 
species of locust; but no quadruped can with more propriety be called 
insectivorous than the ant-eaters (Myrmecophaga), which, as their name 
imports, live upon ants. ‘The great ant-eater, when he comes to an ant- 
hill, scratches it up with his long claws, and then unfolds his slender worm- 
like tongue (which is more than two feet long, and wet with saliva), and 
when covered with ants draws it back into his mouth and swallows 
thousands of them alive, renewing the operation til] no more are to be 
found. He also climbs trees in search of wood-lice and wild-honey. 
Bats, as every one knows, are always flitting about in summer evenings, 
hawking for insects: and the Lemur and monkeys will also eat them. 

Insects likewise afford a favorite kind of food to many reptiles: the 
tortoise ; frogs and toads; and lizards too of different kinds. St. Pierre 
mentions a small and very handsome species in the island of Mauritius, 
that pursues them into the houses, climbs up the walls, and even walks 
over glass, watching with great patience for an opportunity of catching 
them.?, The common snake also is said to receive part of its nutriment 
from them. 

But to revert to insects as indirectly advantageous to us, by furnishing 
food to fishes and birds, beginning with the former. Our rivers abound with 
fish of various kinds, which at particular seasons derive a principal part of 
their food from insects, as the numerous species of the salmon and carp 
genus. These chiefly prey upon the various kinds of Trichoptera, in 
their larva state called case- or caddis-worms, and in their imago may-flies 
(though this last denomination properly belongs only to the Svalis lutaria, 
which generally appears in that month) and Ephemere. Besides these, 
the waters swarm with insects of every order as numerous in proportion to 
the space they inhabit, as those that fill the air, which form the sole 
nutriment of multitudes of our fish, and the partial support of almost all. 

Reaumur has given us a very entertaining account of the infinite hosts 
of Ephemere that by myriads of millions emerge at a certain season of 
the year from some of the rivers in France, which, as it is well worth your 
attention, I shall abridge for you. 

These insects, in their first and intermediate state, are aquatic: they 
either live in holes in the banks of rivers or brooks below the water, so 
that it enters into their habitations, which they seldom quit; or they 
swim about and walk upon the bed of the stream, or conceal themselves 
under stones or upon pieces of stick. Though their life, when they 
assume the perfect state, is usually extremely short, some being disclosed 
after sunset, laying their eggs and dying before sunrise ; and many not 
living more than three hours; yet in their preparatory state their existence 
is much longer, in some one, in others two, in others even three years. 

The different species assume the imago at different times of the year; but 


} Sparrman, ii. 180. 2 St. Pierre, Voy. 73. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 197 


the same species appear regularly at nearly the same period annually, and 
for a certain number of days fill the air in the neighborhood of the rivers, 
emerging also from the water at a certain hour of the day. Those which 
Swammerdam observed began to fly about six o’clock in the evening, or 
about two hours before sunset ; but the great body of those noticed by 
Reaumur did not appear till after that time ; so that the season of different 
harvest is not better known to the farmer, than that in which the Ephemere 
of a particular river are to emerge is to the fishermen. Yet a greater degree 
of heat or cold, the rise or fall of the water, and other circumstances we 
are not aware of, may accelerate or retard their appearance. Between 
the 10th and 15th of August is the time when those of Seine and Marne, 
which Reaumur described, are expected by the fishermen, who call them 
manna: and when their season is come, they say, ‘“‘'The manna begins to 
appear, the manna fell abundantly such a night ;’”—alluding, by this 
expression, either to the astonishing quantity of food which the Ephemere 
afford the fish, or to the large quantity of fish which they then take. 

Reaumur first observed these insects in the year 1738, when they did not 
begin to show themselves in numbers till the 18th of August. On the 19th, 
having received notice from his fisherman that the flies had appeared, he 
got into his boat about three hours before sunset, and detached from the 
banks of the river several masses of earth filled with pupe, which he put 
into a large tub fullof water. This tub, after staying in the boat till about 
eight o’clock, without seeing any remarkable number of the flies, and being 
threatened with a storm, he caused to be landed and placed in his garden, 
at the foot of which ran the Marne. Before the people had landed it, an 
astonishing number of Ephemere emerged from it. Every piece of earth 
that was above the surface of the water was covered by them, some 
beginning to quit their slough, others prepared to fly, and others already on 
the wing; and every where under the water they were to be seen in a 
greater or less degree of forwardness. ‘The storm coming on, he was 
obliged to quit the amusing scene; but when the rain ceased to fall he 
returned to it. As soon as the cloth with which he had ordered the tub to 
be covered was removed, the number of flies appeared to be greatly 
augmented, and kept continually increasing: many flew away, but more 
were drowned. ‘Those already transformed, and continually transforming, 
would have been sufficient of themselves to have made the tub seem full ; 
but their number was soon very much enlarged by others attracted by the 
light. To prevent their being drowned, he caused the tub to be again 
covered with the cloth; and over it he held the light, which was soon 
concealed by a layer of these flies, that might have been taken by handfuls 
from the candlestick. 

But the scene round the tub was nothing to be compared with the 
wonderful spectacle exhibited on the banks of the river. The exclamations 
of his gardener drew the illustrious naturalist thither ; and such a sight he 
had never witnessed, and could scarcely find words to describe. ‘The 
myriads of Ephemere,” says he, ‘“ which filled the air over the current of 
the river, and over the bank on which I stood, are neither to be expressed 
nor conceived. When the snow falls with the largest flakes, and with the 
least interval between them, the air is not so full of them as that which 
surrounded us was of Ephemere. Scarcely had I remained in one place 


17* 


198 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


a few minutes, when the step on which I stood was quite concealed with a 
layer of them from two to four inches in depth. Nea¥ the lowest step a 
surface of water of five or six feet dimensions every way was entirely and 
thickly covered by them ; and what the current carried off was continually 
replaced. Many times I was obliged to abandon my station, not being 
able to bear the shower of Ephemere, which, falling with an obliquity less 
constant than that of an ordinary shower, struck continually, and in a 
manner extremely uncomfortable, every part of my face—eyes, mouth, and 
nostrils were filled with them.” To hold the flambeau on this occasion 
was no pleasant office. ‘The person who filled it had his clothes covered 
in a few moments with these flies, which came from all parts to overwhelm 
him. Before ten o’clock this interesting spectacle had vanished. It was 
renewed for some nights afterwards, but the flies were never in such prodi- 
gious numbers. The fishermen allow only three successive days for the 
great fall of the manna; but a few flies appear both before and after, their 
number increasing in one case, in the other diminishing. Whatever be 
the temperature of the atmosphere, whether it be cold or hot, these flies 
invariably appear at the same hour in the evening, that is, between a 
quarter and half-past eight ; towards nine they begin to fill the air; in the 
following half hour they are in the greatest numbers; and at ten there are 
scarcely any tobe seen. So that in less than two hours this infinite host 
of flies emerge from their parent stream, fill the air, perform their appointed 
work, and vanish. A very large proportion of them falls into the river, 
when the fish have their grand festival and the fishermen a good harvest.' 
Under this head I may observe how much the patient angler is indebted 
to insects for some of his choicest baits, for the best opportunities of show- 
ing his skill, and for the most gratifying part of his diversion. ‘The case- 
worm and several other larve are the best standing bait for many fish. 
The larva of the Ephemera, there called bait and bank-bait®, is much used 
in some parts of Holland. ‘The case-worms, and grubs (I suppose of 
flies) from the tallow chandlers, and the larve of wasps taken out of the 
comb, are in request with us for roach and dace; and | am told by an 
acute observer of these things, the Rev. R. Sheppard, that the Geotrupes 
and Melolonthe are good baits for chub.? But to be an adept in fly-fishing, 
which requires the most skill and furnishes the best diversion, the angler 
ought to be conversant in Entomology, at least sufficiently so to distinguish 
the different species of Phryganea and other Trichoptera, and to know the 
time of their appearance. ‘The angler is not only indebted to insects for 
some of his best baits, but also for the best material to fasten his hooks to, 
and even for making his lines for smaller fish—the Indian grass or gut, as 
it is called (termed in France Cheveur de Florence), which is said to be 
prepared in China from the matter contained in the silk reservoirs of the 
silk-worm, but according to Latreille is the silk vessel itself when dried.* 


1 Reaum. vi. 479—487. 2 Swamm. Bib. Nat. i. c. 4. 106. b. 

3 In Col. Venable’s Experienced Angler, a vast number of insects are enumerated as good 
baits for fish, under the names of Bob, Cadbait, Cankers, Caterpillars, Palmers, Gentles, Bark- 
worms, Oak-worms, Colewort-worms, Flag-morms, Green-flies, Ant-flies, Butterflies, Wasps, 
Hornets, Bees, Humble-bees, Grasshoppers, Dors, Beetles, a great brown fly that lives upon the 
oak like a Scarabee ( Melolontha vulgaris, or Amphimalla solstitialis ?), and flies (i. e. May- 
flies) of various sorts.—See also Mr. Ronald’s Fly-fisher’s Entomology. 

4 Anderson’s Recreations in Agricult. &c. iv. 478.; Latr. Hist. Nat. xiv. 154. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 199 


One of the most important ends for which insects were gifted with such 
powers of multiplication, giving birth to myriads of myriads of individuals, 
was to furnish the feathered part of the creation with a sufficient supply of 
food. The number of birds that derive the whole or a principal part of 
their subsistence from insects is, as is universally known, very great, and 
includes species of almost every order. , 

Amongst the Accipitres the kestril (Falco tinnunculus L.) devours 
abundance of insects. A friend of mine, upon opening one, found its 
stomach full of the remains of grasshoppers and beetles, particularly the 
former, which he suspects constitute great part of the food of this species. 
One of the shrikes, also, or butcher-birds (Lanius collurto)—and it is pro- 
bable that other species of this numerous genus may have the same habits— 
is known to feed upon insects, which it first impales alive on the thorns of 
the sloe and other spinous plants, and then devours. If meat be given it, 
when kept in a cage, it will fix it upon the wires before it eats it. Lanius 
excubitor also impales insects; but Heckewelder denies that it feeds upon 
them. If he be correct, the object of this singular procedure with that 
species may be to allure the birds which it preys upon to a particular spot.} 

Amongst the Pice or Pies the Crotophaga, called the Ani, which is a 
native of Africa and. America, lives upon the locust and Jvodes ricinus, 
which it picks in great numbers from the backs of cattle ; but none are 
greater devourers of insects in this order than rooks. It is for the grubs 
of Melolontha Tipula, &c., that they follow the plough ; and they always 
frequent the meadows in which these larve abound, destroying them in 
vast numbers. Kalm tells us, that when the little crow was extirpated 
from Virginia at an enormous expense, the inhabitants would willingly 
have brought them back again at double the price.* The icteric oriole is 
kept by the Americans in their houses for the sake of clearing them 
of insects; and the purple grackle is so useful in this respect, that when, 
on account of their consuming grain, the American farmers in New Eng- 
land offered a reward of threepence a head for them, and they were in 
consequence nearly extirpated, insects increased to such a degree as to 
cause a total loss of the herbage, and the inhabitants were obliged to 
obtain hay for their cattle not only from Pennsylvania, but even from 


' According to Mr. Heckewelder ( Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc. iv. 124.), L. excubitor, called 

in America the nine-killer, from an idea that it transfixes nine individuals daily, treats in 
this manner Grasshoppers only; while L. collurio would seem to restrict itself chiefly to 
Geotrupes, two of which Mr. Sheppard once observed transfixed in a hedge that he knew to 
be the residence of this bird. Kugellan even thinks that it impales only G. vernalis, which 
he has often found transfixed, but never G. stercorarius. (Schneid. Mag. 259.) I must 
remark, however, that I last summer observed two humble-bees quite alive impaled on the 
thorns of a hedge near my house, which had most probably been so placed by this spe cies, 
L. excubitor being rarely found except in mountainous wilds. (Bewick’s Birds, i. 61.) 
And Prof. Sander states that on opening this bird (Z. collurio) he has sometimes found in 
its stomach nothing but grasshoppers, and at others small beetles and other insects. 
ap A mag Stk. xviii. 234.) Mr. Dunlop, in a letter in Loudon’s Gardener's Magazine 
or May, 1842, (No. exlvi. p. 259.), states, that upon examining a branch of hawthorn on 
which he had for some days observed a pair of fly-catchers feeding their young, he found 
~ upwards of a dozen humble-bees ( Bombus terrestris) fixed upon the spines as securely as if 
done by the hand of man, some being alive, and others dead and partly devoured. Mr. 
Dunlop, after removing the bees to watch the process of the birds in placing them, had soon 
the satisfaction of seeing the fly-catchers catch them on the wing, carry them direct to the 
branch (which was a dead one, apparently on account of the greater hardness of the 
spines), and thrust them on the spines as above described. Mr. W. W. Saunders found a 
number of the yellow underwing moth ( Triphena pronuba) thus fixed. 

® Stillingfl. Tracts, 175. Linn. Trans. v. 105. note b. 


200 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


Great Britain.! Of this order also is the bee-cuckoo paige indicator), 
so celebrated for its instinct, by which it serves as a guide to the wild bees’ 
nests in Africa. Sparrman describes this bird, which is somewhat larger 
than a common sparrow, as giving this information in a singular manner, 
In the evening and morning, which are its meal-times, it excites the atten- 
tion of the Hottentots, colonists, and honey-ratel, by the cry of cherr, cherr, 
cherr, and conducts them to the tree or spot in which the bees’ nest is 
concealed, continually repeating this cry. When arrived at the spot, it 
hovers over it; and then alighting on some neighboring tree or bush, 
sits in silence, expecting to come in for its share of the spoil, which is that 
part of the comb containing the brood.? The wryneck and the wood- 
peckers, the nuthatch and tree-creeper, live entirely upon insects and their 
eggs®, which they pick out of decayed trees, and out of the bark of living 
ones. The former also frequents grass-plats and ant-hill, into which it 
darts its long flexible tongue, and so draws out its prey. The wood- 
pecker likewise draws insects out of their holes by means of the same 
organ, which for this purpose is bony at the end and barbed, and furnished 
with a curious apparatus of muscles to enable them to throw it forward 
with great force. Some species spit the insects on their tongue, and thus 
bring them into their month. In America, the tree-creeper is furnished 
with a box at the end of a long pole to entice it to build in gardens, which 
it is found to be particularly useful in clearing from noxious insects. 
Amongst the Gralle or Waders, many of the long-billed birds eat the 
larve of insects as well as worms; and they form also no inconsiderable 
part of the food of our domestic poultry, especially turkeys, which may 
be daily seen busily engaged in hunting for them, and, as well as ducks, 
will greedily devour the larger insects, as cockchafers, and in North 
America Cicada. Mr. Sheppard was much amused, one day in July, with 
observing a cow which had taken refuge in a pond, probably from the gad- 
fly, and was standing nearly up to its belly in water. A fleet of ducks 
surrounded it, which kept continually jumping at the flies that alighted 
upon it. ‘The cow, as if sensible of the service they were rendering her, 
stood perfectly still, though assailed and pecked on all sides by them. 
The partridge takes her young brood to an ant-hill, where they feast upon 
the larve and pupe, which Swammerdam informs us were sold at market 
in his time to feed various kinds of birds. Dr. Clarke also mentions 
having seen them, as well as the ants themselves, exposed to sale in the 
market at Moscow as a food for nightingales.® Liatreille tells us that 
singing birds are fed in France with the larve of the horse-ant (Formica 
rufa). 
But the Linnean order of Passeres affords the greatest number of 
insectivorous birds; indeed, almost all the species of this order, except 
perhaps the pigeon tribe, and the cross-bill and other Loxiew, more or less 
eat insects. Amongst the thrush tribe, the blackbird, though he will have 
his share of our gooseberries and currants, assist greatly in clearing our 
gardens of caterpillars; and the locust-eating thrush is still more useful in 
the countries subject to that dreadful pest: these birds never appear but 


1 Bingley, ii. 287—290. * Sparrman, ii. 186. 
3 Bewick’s Birds, i. Pref. xxii. 130. 
4 Bib. Nat. i. 126. b. 5 Travels, i. 110. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 901 


with the locusts, and then accompany them in astonishing numbers, prey- 
ing upon them in their larva state. ‘The common sparrow, though pro- 
scribed as a most mischievous bird, destroys a vast number of insects. 
Bradley has calculated that a single pair, having young to maintain, will 
destroy 3360 caterpillars in a week.!. They also prey upon butterflies 
and other winged insects. ‘The fly-catchers (Muscicapa),and the warblers 
(Motacilla), which include our sweetest song8ters, are almost entirely sup- 
ported by insects; so that were it not for these despised creatures we 
should be deprived of some of our greatest pleasures, and half the interest 
and delight of our vernal walks would be done away. Our groves would 
no longer be vocal; our little domestic favorites the red-breast and the 
wren would desert us; and the heavens would be depopulated. We 
should lose too some of the most esteemed dainties of our tables, one of 
which, the wheat-ear, is said to be attracted to our downs by a particular 
insect.” Lastly, insects are the sole food of swallows, which are always 
on the wing hawking for them, and their flight is regulated by that of 
their prey. When the atmosphere is dry and clear, and their small game 
flies high, they seek the skies; when moist, and the insects are low or 
upon the ground, they descend, and just skim the surface of the earth and 
waters ; and thus by their flight are regarded as prognosticating fair or wet 
weather. I was one summer much interested and amused by observing 
the tender care and assiduity with which an old swallow supplied her 
young with this kind of food. My attention was called to a young brood 
that, having left their nest before they were strong enough to take wing, 
were stationed on the lead which covers a bow window in my house. 
The mother was perpetually going and returning, putting an insect into 
the mouth first of one then of the others in succession, all fluttering and 
opening their mouths to receive her gift. She was scarcely ever more 
than a minute away, and continued her excursions as long as we had time 
to observe her. When the little ones were satisfied, they put their head 
under their wing and went to sleep. The number of insects caught by 
this tribe is inconceivable. But it is not in summer only that birds derive 
their food from the insect tribes: even in winter the pupe of Lepi- 
doptera, as Mr. White tells us, are the grand support of those that have a 
soft bill.3 


I shall close my list of the indirect benefits derived from insects, by ad- 
verting to the very singular apparent subserviency of some of them to the 
functions of certain vegetables. 

You well know that some plants are gifted with the faculty of catching 
flies. These vegetable Muscicape, which have been enumerated by 
Dr. Barton of Philadelphia, who has published an ingenious paper on the 
subject*, may be divided into three classes :—First, those that entrap insects 
by the irritability of their stamina, which close upon them when touched. 
Under this head come Apocynum androsemifolium, Asclepias syrica and 
curassavica, Nerium oleander, and a grass described by Michaux under the 
name of Leersia lenticularis. The second class includes those which 
entrap them by some viscosity of the plant, as many species of Rhododen- 


1 Reaum. ii. 408. 2 Bingley, ii. 374. 
3 White’s Selborne, i. 181. 4 Philos. Mag. xxxix. 107. 


202 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


dron, Kalmia, Robinia, Silene, Lythrum, Populus balgamifera, &c.1 And 
under the third class will arrange those which ensnare by their leaves, 
whether from some irritability in them, as in Dionea, Drosera, &c., or 
merely from their forming hollow vessels containing water into which the 
flies are enticed either by their carrion-like odor, or the sweet fluid which 
many of them secrete near the faux ; as in Sarracenia, Nepenthes, Aqua- 
rium, Cephalotus, &c., the tubular leaves of which are usually found stored 
with putrefying insects. In this last class may be placed the common 
Dipsacus of this country, the connate leaves of which form a kind of basin 
round the stem that retains rain-water, in which many insects are drowned. 
To these a fourth class might be added, consisting of those plants whose 
flowers smelling like carrion (Stapelia hirsuta, &c.) entice flies to lay their 
eggs upon them, which thus perish. 

The number of insects thus destroyed is prodigious. It is scarcely pos- 
sible to find a flower of the Muscicape asclepiadee that has not entrapped 
its victim, and some of them in the United States closely cover hundreds 
of acres together. 

What may be the precise use of this faculty is not so apparent. Dr. 
Barton doubts whether the flowers that catch insects, being only temporary 
organs, can derive any nutriment from them; and he does not think it 
probable that the leaves of Dionea, &c. which are usually found in rich 
boggy soil, can have any need of additional stimulous. As nothing, how- 
ever, is made in vain, there can be little doubt that these ensnared insects 
are subservient to some important purpose in the economy of the plants 
which are endowed with the faculty of taking them, though we may be 
ignorant what that purpose is ; and an experiment of Mr. Knight’s, nursery- 
man in King’s Road, London, seems to prove that, in the case of Dionea 
at least, the very end in view, contrary to Dr. Barton’s supposition, is the 
supplying the leaves with animal manure ; for he found that a plant upon 
whose leaves he laid fine filaments of raw beef was much more luxuriant 
in its growth than others not so treated.” Possibly the air evolved from 
the putrefying insects with which Sarracenia purpurea is sometimes so 
filled as to scent the atmosphere round it, may be in a similar manner 
favorable to its vegetation. 

Most of the insects which are found in the tubular leaves of this and similar 
plants enter into them voluntarily ; but Sir James Smith mentions a curious 
fact, from which it appears that in some cases they are deposited by other 
species. One of the gardeners of the Liverpool Botanic Garden observed an 
insect, from the description of one of the Crabronide, which dragged several 
large flies to the Sarracenia adunca, and having with some difficulty forced 
them under the lid or cover of its leaf, deposited them in its tubular part, 
which was half filled with water ; and on examination all the leaves were 
found crowded with dead or drowning flies. What was the object of this 
singular manceuvre does not seem very obvious. At the first glance one 
might suppose that, having deposited an egg in the fly, it intended to avail 


1 Small flies are sometimes found sticking to the glutinous stigma of some of the Orchi- 
dex like birds on a limed twig (Sprengel, Entdecktes Geheimniss, 21.) ; and ants are not un- 
frequently detained in the milky juice which the touch of even their light feet causes to 
exude from the calyxes of the common garden lettuce.—Ann. of Bot. ii. 590. 

2 Elements of the Science of Botany, 62. 

3? Smith’s Introduction to Botany, 199. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 203 


itself of the tube of the leaf instead of a burrow. Yet we know of no such 
strange deviation from natural instinct, which would be the more remarkable, 
because the insect was European, while the plant was American, and grow- 
ing in a hot-house. And, at any rate, it does not seem very likely that 
the insect would commit her egg to the tube without having previously 
examined it; in which case she must have discovered it to be half fulkof 
water, and consequently unfit for her purpose. It is not so wonderful that 
many large flies should, as Professor Barton informs us, drop their eggs 
into the Ascidia furnished with dead carcasses ; and it seems very probable 
that Dytisct oviposit in them; for the Squilla, which Rumphius found 
there, was probably one of their larve, this being the old name for them." 

However problematical the agency of insects caught by plants as to 
their nutriment, there can be no doubt that many species perform an 
important function with regard to their impregnation, which indeed without 
their aid would in some cases never take place at all. Thus, for the due 
fertilization of the common Barberry (Berberis vulgaris), it is necessary 
that the irritable stamens should be brought into contact with the pistil by 
the application of some stimulus to the base of the filament; but this 
would never take place were not insects attracted by the melliferous glands 
of the flower to insinuate themselves amongst the filaments, and thus, 
while seeking their own food, unknowingly fulfil the intentions of nature 
in another department.? 

The agency of these little operators is not less indispensable in the 
beautiful tribe of Iris. In these, as appears from the observations of 
KOlreuter, the true stigma is situated on the upper side of a transverse 
membrane (arcus eminens of Haller), which is stretched across the middle 
of the under surface of the petal-like expansion or style-flag, the whole of 
which has been often improperly regarded as fulfilling the office of a stigma. 
Now, as the anther is situated at the base of the style-flag which covers 
it, at a considerable distance from the stigma, and at the same time cut 
off from all access to it by the intervening barrier formed by the arcus emt- 
nens, it is clear that but for some extraneous agency the pollen could never 
possibly arrive at the place of its destination. In this case the humble-bee 
is the operator. Led by instinct, or, as the ingenious Sprengel supposes, 
by one of those honey marks (Saftmaal) or spots of a different color from 
the rest of the corolla, which, according to him, are placed in many 
flowers expressly to guide insects to the nectaries, she pushes herself 
between the stiff style-flag and elastic petal, which last, while she is in 
the interior, presses her close to the anther, and thus causes her to brush 
off the pollen with her hairy back, which ultimately, though not at once, 
conyeys it to the stizma. Having exhausted the nectar, she retreats back- 
wards ; and in doing this is indeed pressed by the petal to the arcus emi- 
nens ; but it is only to its lower or negative surface, which cannot influence 
impregnation. She now takes her way to the second petal, and insinua- 
ting herself under its style-flag, her back comes into close contact with the 
true stigma, which is thus impregnated with the pollen of the first visited 
anther; and in this manner migrating from one part of the corolla to 
another, and from flower to flower, she fructifies one with pollen gathered 
in her search after honey in another. Sprengel found that not only are 


fi) Mouffet, 319. ? Smith’s Tracts, 165. Kolreuter, Ann. of Bot. ii. 9. 


904 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


insects indespensable in fructifying the different species of Iris, but that 
some of them, as J. wiphium, require the agency of the larger humble- 
bees, which alone are strong enough to force their way beneath the style- 
flag; and hence, as these insects are not so common as many others, this 
Iris is often barren, or bears imperfect seeds.'| Sprengel also contends, 
that insects are essentially necessary in the impregnation of Asclepiadee ; 
in which opinion he is confirmed by the conclusive testimony of the cele- 
brated botanist Robert Brown, Esq., who states? that there can be no 
doubt that the agency of insects is very frequently, though not always, 
employed in the fecundation of Orchidee, “ but that in those Asclepiadee 
that have been fully examined, the absolute necessity for their assistance 
is manifest.” 

Aristolochia clematitis, according to Professor Willdenow, is so formed, 
that the anthers of themselves cannot impregnate the stigma; but this 
important affair is devolved upon a particular species of gnat (Cecidomyia 
pennicornis). ‘The throat of the flower is lined with dense hair, pointing 
downward, so as to form a kind of funnel or entrance like that of some 
kinds of mouse-traps, through which the insects may easily enter, but not 
return ; several creep in, and, uneasy at their confinement, are constantly 
moving to and fro, and so deposit the pollen upon the stigma; but when 
the work entrusted to them is completed, and impregnation has taken place, 
the hair which prevented their escape shrinks, and adheres closely to the 
sides of the flower, and these little go-betweens of Flora at length leave 
their prison.? Sir James Smith supposes that it is for want of some insect 
of this kind that Aristolochia sipho never forms fruit in this country. 

Equally important is the agency of insects in fructifying the plants of 
the Linnean classes Monecia, Diecia, and Polygamia, in which the sta- 
mens are in one blossom and the pistil in another. In exploring these for 
honey and pollen, which last is the food of several insects besides bees’, 
it becomes involved in the hair with which in many cases their bodies seem 
provided for this express purpose, and is conveyed to the germen requiring 
its fertilizing influence. Sprengel supposes that with this view some plants 
have particular insects appropriated to them; as to the diccious nettle 
Catheretes urtice, to the toad-flax Catheretes gravidus, both minute 
beetles, &c. Whether the operations of Cynips psenes be of that advan- 
tage in fertilizing the fig which the cultivators of that fruit in the East 
have long supposed, is doubted by Hasselquist and Oliver’, both compe- 
tent observers, who have been on the spot. Our own gardeners, however, 
will admit their obligations to bees in setting their cucumbers and melons, 


1 Chr. Conr. Sprengel, Entdecktes Geheimniss, &c. Berlin, 1793, 4to.; quoted in Ann. of 
Bot. i. 414. 

2 On the Organs and Mode of Fecundation in Orchidea and Asclepiadeg. Linn. Trans. 
xvi. 731. 

3 Grundriss der Krauterkunde, 353. A writer, however, in the Annual Medical Review (ii. 
400.) doubts the accuracy of this fact, on the ground that he could never find C. penni- 
cornis, though A. clematitis has produced fruit two years at Brompton. Meigen (Dipt. i. 
100. e.) places this amongst his doubtful Cecidomyig. Fabricius considers it as a Chi- 
ronomus. 

4 I have frequently observed Dermestes flavescens, Ent. Brit. (Byturus) eat both the petals 
and stamens of Stellaria holosteum ; and Mordelle will open the anthers with the securiform 
joints of their palpi to get at the pollen. 

5 Hasselquist’s Travels, 253. Latr. Hist. Nat. xiii. 204. 

6 For a full account of the various opinions on this disputed point, see an interesting 
article by Mr. Westwood in Trans. Ent. Soc, Lond. ii, 214—224. 


INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 205 


to which they find the necessity of themselves conveying pollen from a 
male flower, when the early season of the year precludes the assistance of 
insects. Sprengel asserts that, apparently with a view to prevent hybrid 
mixtures, insects which derive their honey or pollen from different plants 
indiscriminately will, during a whole day, confine their visits to that species 
on which they first fixed in the morning, provided there be a sufficiént 
supply of it!; and the same observation was long since made with respect 
to bees by our countryman Dobbs.? 
Thus we see that the flowers which we vainly think are 
«___. born to blush unseen, 
And waste their fragrance on the desert air,” 
though unvisited by the lord of the creation, who boasts that they were 
made for him, have nevertheless myriads of insect visitants and admirers, 
which, though they pilfer their sweets, contribute to their fertility. 
I am, &c. 


“1 Willd. Grundriss, 352. 2 Phil. Trans, xlvi. 536. 


18 


206 t 


LETTER X. 


BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 
DIRECT BENEFITS. 


My last letter was devoted to the indirect advantages which we derive 
from insects; in the present I shall enumerate those of a more direct 
nature for which we are indebted to them, beginning with their use as the 
food of man, in which respect they are of more importance than you may 
have conceived. 


One class of animals, which, till very lately, have been regarded as 
belonging to the entomological world, I mean the Crustacea, consisting 
principally of the genus Cancer of Linné, are universally reckoned 
amongst our greatest dainties ; and they who would turn with disgust from 
a locust or the grub of a beetle, feel no symptoms of nausea when a lob- 
ster, crab, or shrimp is set before them. The fact is, that habit has recon- 
ciled us to the eating of these last, which, viewed in themselves, with 
their threatening claws and many feet, are really more disgusting than the 
former. Had the habit been reversed, we should have viewed the former 
with appetite and the latter with abhorrence, as do the Arabs, “ who are 
as much astonished at our eating crabs, lobsters, and oysters, as we are at 
their eating locusts.”! That this would have been the case is clear, at 
least as far as regards the former position, from the practice in other parts 
of the world, both in ancient and modern times, to which, begging you to 
lay aside your English prejudices, I shall now call your attention ; first 
observing by the way, that the insects used as food, generally speaking, 
live on vegetable substances, and are consequently much more select and 
cleanly in their diet than the swine or the duck, which form a favorite part 
of ours.” 

Many larve* that belong to the order Coleoptera are eaten in different 
parts of the world. ‘The grub of the palm-weevil (Cordylia* palmarum), 


1 Walpole in Clark’s Travels, ii. 187. Even Mr. Boyle speaks with abhorrence of eating 
raw oysters.—Walton’s Angler, Life, p. 12. 

* A long and interesting paper by the Rev. F. W. Hope upon edible insects has appeared 
in the Trans. Ent. Soc. (vol. ili. part 2.), whilst this sheet is going through the press, to 
which we are unable therefore more fully to refer. 

3 Baron Humboldt asks (Person. Narr. VI. i. 8. note)— What are those worms (Lonl 
in Arabic) which Captain Lyon, the fellow-traveler of my brave and unfortunate friend 
Mr. Ritchie, found in the pools of the desert of Fezzan, which served the Arabs for food, 
and which have the taste of caviare? Are they not insects’ eggs resembling the Aguautle, 
which I saw sold in the markets of Mexico, and which are collected on the surface of the 
lakes of Texcuco?”’ For this latter fact he refers to the Gazeta de Litteratura de Mexico, 
1794, iii. No. 26. p. 201. It appears from this note of the illustrious traveler, that insects 
are used as food in their egg as well as their other states. 

4 Herbst and Schonherr call this distinct genus Rhyncophorus ; but as this is too near the 
name of the tribe ( Rhyncophora), we have adopted Thunberg’s name, altering the termina- 
tion, to distinguish it from Cordyle, a genus of Lizards. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 207 


which is the size of the thumb, has been long in request in both the 
Indies. Elian speaks of an Indian king, who, for a dessert, instead of 
fruit set before his Grecian guests a roasted worm taken from a plant, 
probably the larva of this insect, which he says the Indians esteem very 
delicious—a character that was confirmed by some of the Greeks who 
tasted it. Madam Merian has figured one of these larve, and says that 
the natives of Surinam roast and eat them as something exquisite.” A 
friend of mine, who has resided a good deal in the West Indies, where 
the palm-grub is called Grugru, informs me that the late Sir John La 
Forey, who was somewhat of an epicure, was extremely fond of it when 
properly cooked. 

The larve also of the larger species of the capricorn tribe (Cerambyax 
L.; Longicornes Latr.) are accounted very great delicacies in many 
countries ; and the Cossus of Pliny, which he tells us the Roman epicures 
fattened with flour’, most probably belonged to this tribe. Linné indeed, 
following the opinion of Ray*, supposes the caterpillar of the great goat- 
moth, the anatomy of which has been so wonderfully traced by the eye 
and pencil of the incomparable Lyonet, to be the Cossus. But there 
seems a strong reason against this opinion ; for Linné’s Cossus lives most 
commonly in the willow, Pliny’s in the oak; and: the former is a very 
disagreeable, ugly, and fetid larva, not very likely to attract the Roman 
epicures. Probably they were the larve of Prionus coriarius, which I 
have myself extracted from the oak, or of one of its congeners.° The 
grub of P. damicornis, which is of the thickness of a man’s finger, is 
eaten at Surinam, in America, and in the West Indies, both by whites and 
blacks, who empty, wash, and roast them, and find them delicious. Mr. 
Hall informs me, that in Jamaica this grub is called Macauco, and is in 
request at the principal tables. A similar insect is dressed at Mauritius 
under the name of Moutac, which the whites as well as negroes eat 
greedily.” The larva of P. cervicornis is, according to Linné, held in 
. equal estimation ; and that of Acanthocinus tribulus, when roasted, forms 
an article of food in Africa.? It is probable that all the species of this 
genus might be safely eaten, as well as many other grubs of Coleoptera ; 
and although I do not feel disposed to recommend with Reaumur’, that 
the larve of Oryctes nasicornis should be sought for “ dans les couches de 
fumier,” yet I think with Dr. Darwin”, that those of the cockchafer which 
feed upon the roots of grass, or the perfect insects themselves, which, if 
we may judge from the eagerness with which cats, and turkeys and other 


1 #lian, Hist. l. xiv. c. 13.; quoted in Reaum. ii. 343. 

2 Ins. Sur. 48. 3 Hist. Nat. 1. xvii. c. 24. 

4 Wisdom of God, 9th ed. 307. Ray first adopted the opinion here maintained, that the 
Cossi were the larve of some beetle ; but afterwards, from observing in the caterpillar of 
Cossus ligniperda a power of retracting its prolegs within the body, he conjectured that the 
hexapod larva from Jamaica (Prionus damicornis ?), given him by Sir Hans Sloane, might 
have the same faculty, and so be the caterpillar of a Bombyx. 

5 Amoreux has collected the different opinions of entomologists on the subject of Pliny’s 
Cossus, which has been supposed to be the larva of Cordylia palmarum by Geoffroy ; of 
Lucanus cervus by Scopoli, and of Prionus damicornis by Drury. The first and last, being 
neither natives of Italy, nor inhabiting the oak, are out of the question. The larve of 
Lucanus servus and Prionus coriarius, which are found in the oak as well as in other trees, 
may each have been eaten under this name, as their difference would not be discernible 
either to collectors or cvoks.—Amoreux, 154. 

8 Merian, Ins. Sur. 24, 7 St. Pierre, Voy. 72. 8 Smeathman, 32. 

9 Reaum. ii. 344. 10 Phytol. 364. 


208 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


birds, devour them, are no despicable bonne bouche, might be added to 
our entremets. 'This would be one means of keeping down the numbers 
of these occasionally destructive animals. 'The Mexican Indians, accord- 
ing to M. Vasselet and Madame Sallé and her son, who have transmitted 
such numbers of fine insects from Mexico to M. Chevrolat of Paris, pre- 
pare a liquor from a beetle (Cicindela curvata) by macerating it in water 
or spirit, which they apparently use as a stimulating beverage.! 

In the next order of insects, the Orthoptera, the Gryllus, or locust 
tribe, as they are the greatest destroyers of food, so as some recompense 
they furnish a considerable supply of it to numerous nations. They are 
recorded to have done this from the most remote antiquity, some Ethiopian 
tribes having been named from this circumstance Acridophagi (locust- 
eaters). Pliny also relates that they were in high esteem as meat 
amongst the Parthians.? Hasselquist, in reply to some inquiries which he 
made on this subject with respect to the Arabs, was informed that at 
Mecca, when there was a scarcity of corn, as a substitute for flour they 
would grind locusts in their hand-mills, or pound them in stone mortars ; 
that they mixed this four with water into a dough, and made their cakes 
of it, which they baked like other bread. He adds, that it is not unusual 
for them to eat locusts when there is no famine ; but then they boil them 
first a good while in water, and afterwards stew them with butter into a 
kind of fricassee of no bad flavor.* Leo Africanus, as quoted by Bochart, 
gives a similar account.? Sparrman informs us that the Hottentots are 
highly rejoiced at the arrival of the locusts in their country, although they 
destroy all its verdure, eating them in such quantities as to get visibly 
fatter than before, and making of their eggs a brown or coffee-colored 
soup. He also relates a curious notion which they have with respect to 
the origin of the locusts—that they proceed from the good will of a great 
master-cgnjuror a long way to the north, who, having removed the stone 
from the mouth of a certain deep pit, lets loose these animals to be food 
for them.® This is not unlike the account given by the author of the 
Apocalypse, of the origin of the symbolical locusts, which are said to 
ascend upon an angel’s opening the pit of the abyss.’ Clenard, in his 
letters quoted by Bochart, says that they bring waggon-loads of locusts 
to Fez, as a usual article of food.* Major Moor informs me, that when 
the cloud of locusts noticed in a former letter visited the Mahratta 
country, the common people salted and ate them. This was anciently 
the custom with many of the African nations, some of whom also smoked 
them.® They appear even to have been an article of food offered for sale 
in the markets of Greece’; and on a subject so well known, to quote no 
other writers, Jackson observes that, when he was in Barbary in 1799, 
dishes of locusts were generally served up at the principal tables and 
esteemed a great delicacy. ‘They are preferred by the Moors to pigeons ; 
and a person may eat a plateful of two or three hundred without feeling 
any ill effects. ‘They usually boil them in water half an hour, (having 
thrown away the head, wings, and legs,) then sprinkle them with salt and 


1 Silbermann, Révue Entom. i. 238. 


® Diod. Sic. |. iii. ec, 29. Strabonis, Geog. 1. xvi. &c. 
3 Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 29. 4 Travels, 232. 5 Hieroz. ii. 1. 14. ¢. 7. 
§ Sparrman, i. 367. 7 Rev. ix. 2, 3: 


8 Hieroz. ii. \. 4. c. 7, 492. ® Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. vi. c. 30. 10 Td. Ibid. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 209 


pepper, and fry them, adding a little vinegar.'. From this string of 
authorities you will readily see how idle was the controversy concerning 
the locusts which formed part of the sustenance of John the Baptist, 
agreeing with Hasselquist®, that they could be nothing but the animal 
locust, so common a food in the East; and how apt even learned men 
are to perplex a plain question, from ignorance of the customs of other 
countries. 

In the hemipterous order of insects, none are more widely dispersed, or 
(if you will forgive me a pun) have made more noise in the world, than 
the Cicada tribe. From the time of Homer, who compares the garrulity 
of age to the chirping of these insects*, they have been celebrated by the 
poets ; and Anacreon, as you well know, has inscribed a very beautiful little 
ode to them. We learn from Aristotle, that these insects were eaten by 
the polished Greeks, and accounted very delicious. The worm (larva), 
he says, lives in the earth where it takes its growth: that it then becomes 
a Tettigometra (pupa), when he observes they are most delicious, just 
before they burst from their covering. From this state they change to the 
Tettix or Cicada, when the males at first have the best flavor; but after 
impregnation the females are preferred on account of their white eggs.4 
Athenzus also and Aristophanes mention their being eaten; and Atlian is 
extremely angry with the men of his age, that an animal sacred to the 
Muses should be strung, sold, and greedily devoured.® Pliny tells us that 
the nations of the East, even the Parthians, whose wealth was abundant, 
use them as food.6 The imago of the Cicada septemdecim is still eaten 
by the Indians in America, who pluck off the wings and boil them’; and 
the aborigines of New South Wales, as we learn from Mr. Bennett, for- 
merly used various species of the Cicadide as food, stripping off the wings 
' and eating them raw. They are aware that the sounds made by these 
insects which they call galang-galang, are peculiar to the males, and de- 
pend upon their drums, observing to Mr. Bennett, in their peculiar Eng- 
lish, “* Old woman galang-galang no got, no make a noise.’’® 

This ancient Greek taste for Crcadé seems now much gone out of 
fashion ; but perhaps if it were revived in those countries where the insects 
are to be found, for they inhabit only warm climates’, it would be ascer- 
tained that so polished a people did not relish them without reason. 

No insects are more numerous in this island than the caterpillars of 
Lepidoptera: if these could be used in aid of the stock of food in times 
of scarcity, it might subserve the double purpose of ridding us of a nuisance, 
and relieving the public pressure. Reaumur suggests this mode of 
diminishing the numbers of destructive caterpillars, speaking of that of 
Plusia Gamme, a moth which did such infinite mischief in France in the 
year 1735."° If, however, we were to take to eating caterpillars, I should 

1? Jackson’s Travels in Marocco, 53. The Rev. R. Sheppard caused some of our large 


English grasshoppers ( Acrida viridissima) to be cooked in the way here recommended, only 
substituting butter for vinegar, and found them excellent. 


2 Travels, 230. * Hom. Il. y. 150—154, 4 Arist. Hist. An. |. v. c. 30. 
Vide Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 1. 4. c. 7. 491. 
Hist. Nat. \. xi. c. 26. 7 P. Collinson in Phil. Trans. 1763. n. x. 


3 Bennett’s Wanderings in New South Wales, i. 237., quoted in Entom. Mag. iii. 211. 
® One species however has been found in Hampshire in the New Forest. See Samouelle’s 
Entomologist’s Useful Compendium, t. 5. f. 2. 
10 Reaum. ii. 341. 
18* 


210 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


for my own part be of the mind of the red-breasts, and eat only the naked 
ones.!. But you will see that there is some encouragement from precedent 
to make a meal of the caterpillars which infest our cabbages and cauli- 
flowers. Amongst the delicacies of a Boshies-man’s table, Sparrman 
reckons those caterpillars from which butterflies proceed.” The Chinese, 
who waste nothing, after they have unwound the silk from the cocoons of 
the silkworm, send the chrysalis to table: they also eat the larva of a 
hawkmoth (Sphinx), some of which tribe, Dr. Darwin tells us, are, in 
his opinion, very delicious*: and, lastly, the natives of New Holland eat 
the caterpillars of a species of moth of a singular new genus, to which 
my friend, Alexander MacLeay, Esq. has assigned characters, and, from 
the circumstance of its larva coming out only in the night to feed, has 
called it Nycterobius. A species of butterfly also (Euplea hamata, Mac- 
Leay), as we learn from Mr. Bennett, congregates on the insulated granitic 
rocks in a particular district, which he visited in the months of November, 
December, and January, in such countless myriads (with what object is 
unknown), that the native blacks, who call them Bugong, assemble from 
far and near to collect them, and, after removing the wings and down by 
stirring them on the ground previously heated by a large fire, and winnow- 
ing them, eat the bodies, or store them up for use by pounding and smoking 
them. The bodies of these butterflies abound in an oil with the taste of 
nuts; and, when first eaten, produce violent vomitings, and other debilita- 
ting effects: but these go off after a few days, and the natives then thrive 
and fatten exceedingly on this diet, for which they have to contend witha 
black crow, which is also attracted by the Bugongs in great numbers, and 
which they despatch with their clubs, and use as food.® 

The next order, the Neuroptera, contains the white ant tribe (Termes), 
which, in return for the mischief it does at certain times, affords an abun- 
dant supply of food to some of the African nations. The Hottentots eat 
them boiled, and raw, and soon get into good condition upon this food.® 
Kénig, quoted by Smeathman, says that in some parts of the East Indies 
the natives make two holes in the nests of the white ants, one to the 
windward and the other to the leeward, placing at the latter opening a pot 
rubbed with an aromatic herb, to receive the insects driven out of their 
nest by a fire of stinking materials made at the former.*. Thus they catch 
great quantities, of which they make with flour a variety of pastry, that 
they can afford to sell cheap to the poorer people. Mr. Smeathman says 
he has not found the Africans so ingenious in procuring or dressing them. 
They are content with a very small part of those that fall into the waters 
at the time of swarming, which they skim off with calabashes, bring large 
kettles full of them to their habitations, and parch them in iron pots over 
a gentle fire, stirring them about as is done in roasting coffee. In that 
state, without sauce or other addition, they serve them up as delicious 
food, and eat them by handfuls as we do comfits. He has eaten them 


1 Ray’s Letters, 135. ® Sparrman, i. 201. 


3 Sir G. Staunton’s Vay. iii. 246. 4 Phytol. 364. 
5 Bennewt’s Wanderings, ubi supra, i. 265—270. § Sparrman, i. 363. 


7 Captain Green relates that, in the ceded districts in India, they place the branches of 
trees over the nests, and then by means of smoke drive out the insects ; which, attempting 
to fly, their wings are broken off by the mere touch of the branches. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 211 


dressed in this way several times, and thought them delicate, nourishing, 
and wholesome, being sweeter than the grub of the weevil of the palms 
(Cordylia Palmarum), and resembling in taste sugared cream or sweet 
almond paste.t The female ant, in particular, is supposed by the Hindoos 
to be endowed with highly nutritive properties, and, we are told by Mr. 
Broughton, was carefully sought after and preserved for the use of the 
debilitated Surjee Rao, prime-minister of Scindia, chief of the Mahrattas.” 

The Hymenoptera order also furnishes a few articles to add to this 
head. Ido not allude to the nectar which the bees collect for us. But 
perhaps you do not suspect that bees themselves in some places serve for 
food, yet Knox tells us that they are eaten in Ceylon? :—an ungrateful return 
for their honey and wax, which I would on no account recommend. Piso 
speaks of yellow ants called Cupza inhabiting Brazil, the abdomen of which 
many used for food, as well as a larger species under the name of Tama- 
joura*; which account is confirmed by Humboldt, who informs us that 
ants are eaten by the Marivatanos and Margueritares, mixed with resin for 
sauce ; as are those of Yariba in Africa, as Lander informs us, stewed in 
butter. Ants, 1 speak from experience, have no unpleasant flavor; they 
are very agreeably acid, and the taste of the trunk and abdomen is dif- 
ferent ; so that I am not so much surprised, as Mr. Consett seems to have 
been, at the avidity with which the young Swede mentioned by him sat 
down to the siege of an ants’ nest.° This author states, that in some parts 
of Sweden ants are distilled along with rye, to give a flavor to the inferior 
kinds of brandy. Under this head may not improperly be mentioned 
several galls, the product of different species of gall-flies (Cynips), par- 
ticularly those found on some kinds of Sage, viz. Salvia pomifera, S. 
triloba, and SS. officinalis, which are very juicy like apples, and crowned 
with rudiments of leaves resembling the calyx of that fruit. They are 
esteemed in the Levant for their aromatic and acid flavor, especially when 
prepared with sugar, and form a considerable article of commerce from 
Scio to Constantinople, where they are regularly exposed in the market.’ 
The galls of ground-ivy have also been eaten in France; but Reaumur, 
who tasted them, is doubtful whether they will everrank with good fruits.® 

To the Diptera order, as a source of food, man can scarcely be said to 
be under any obligation ; the larva of Tyrophaga casei, which is so com- 
monly found in cheese, being the only one ever eaten—a dainty as some 
think it, of whom you will perhaps say with Scopoli, ‘“ quibus has delicias 
non invideo.””? 

The order Aptera, now that the Crustacea are excluded, does not much 
more abound in esculent insects than the Diptera. The only species 
which have tempted the appetite of man in this order are the cheese-mite 
(Acarus Siro)—lice, which are eaten by the Hottentots and natives of 
the western coast of Africa, who, from their love of this game, which 
they not only collect themselves from their well-stored capital pasture, 
but employ their wives in the chase, have been sometimes called PAthi- 
rophagi.'° Insects of the class Arachnida, which you will think still more 
~1 Smeathman, 31. STS TS ee 

2 Letters written in a Mahratta Camp in 1809. 3 Knox’s Ceylon, 25. 

4 Piso, Ind. 1. v. c..13. 291. 5 Travels in Sweden, 118. 6 Tbid. 


7 Smith’s Introd. to Bot. 346. Olivier’s Travels, i. 139. 
8 Reaum. iii. 416. ® Scop. Carniol. 337. © Latr. Hist. Nat. viii, 93. 


i 


212 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


repulsive than the last tribe, form an article in Sparrman’s list of the 
Boshies-man’s dainties!; and Labillardiere tells us that the inhabitants of 
New Caledonia seek for and eat with avidity large quantities of a spider 
nearly an inch long (which he calls Aranea edulis), and which they roast 
over the fire.2 Even individuals amongst the more polished nations of 
Europe are recorded as having a similar taste ; so that, if you could rise 
above vulgar prejudices, you would in all probability find them a most 
delicious morsel. If you require precedents, Reaumur tells us of a young 
lady who when she walked in her grounds never saw a spider that she 
did not take and crack upon the spot.? Another female, the celebrated 
Anna Maria Schurman, used to eat them like nuts, which she affirmed 
they much resembled in taste, excusing her propensity by saying that she 
was born under the sign Scorpio.* If you wish for the authority of the 
learned, Lalande the celebrated French astronomer was, as Latreille wit- 
nessed*, equally fond of these delicacies. And, lastly, if not content with 
taking them seriatim, you should feel desirous of eating them by handfuls, 
you may shelter yourself under the authority of the German immortalized 
by Résel®, who used to spread them upon his bread like butter, observing 
that he found them very useful, “ wm sich auszulazxiren.” These edible 
Aptera and Arachnida are all sufficiently disgusting: but we feel our 
nausea quite turned into horror when we read in Humboldt that he has 
seen the Indian children drag out of the earth centipedes eighteen inches 
long and more than half an inch broad, and devour them.” 

After all I have said, you may perhaps still feel a prejudice against 
insects as food; but I think, when you recollect that Oberon and his 
queen Titania, that renowned personage Robin Goodfellow, ‘ with all 
the fairy elves that be,” number insects amongst their choicest cates, you 
will no longer be heretical in this article, but yield with a good grace ; 
and as a reward I will copy out for you a beautiful poetical description 
of Oberon’s feast, which was pointed out to me by a learned bibliogra- 


phical friend, John Crosse, Esq. of Hull, in Herrick’s Hesperides, 1658. 


Shapcot. to thee the fairy state 

I with discretion dedicate ; 

Because thou prizest things that are 
Curious and unfamiliar. 

Take first the feast; these dishes gone, 
We'll see the fairy court anon. 

A little mushroom table spread ; 

After short prayers, they set on bread, 
A moon-parch’d grain of purest wheat, 
With some small glit’ring grit to eat 
His choicest bits with; then in a trice 
They make a feast less great than nice. 
But all this while his eye is serv’d, 

We must not think his ear was starv’d ; 
But that there was in place to stir 

His spleen, the chirring grasshopper, 
The merry cricket, puling fly, 

The piping gnat for minstrelsy : 

And now we must imagine first 

The elves present, to quench his thirst, 


Nee LUE EEE EEE SEES 


? Sparrman, i. 201. ‘ ® Voyage & la Recherche de la Perouse, ii. 240. 
3 Reaum ii. 342. 4 Shaw, Nat. Mise. 
& Hist. Nat. vii. 227. ® Résel, iv. 257. 


Y Personal Travels, ii. 205. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 213 


A pure seed pearl of infant dew, 
Brought and besweeten’d in a blue 
And pregnant violet; which done, 

His kitling eyes begin to run 

Quite through the table, where he spies 
The horns of papery butterflies, 

Of which he eats, and tastes a little 

Of what we call the cuckoo’s spittle ; ° 
A little furze-ball pudding stands 

By, yet not blessed by his hands, 

That was too coarse ; but then forthwith 

He ventures boldly on the pith 

Of sugar’d rush, and eats the sag 

And well be-strutted bee’s sweet bag; 

Gladding his palate with some store 

Of emmet’s eggs: what would he more? 

But beards of mice, a newt’s stew’d thigh, 

A bloated earwig and a fly ; 

Witb the red-capp’d worm that’s shut 

Within the concave of a nut, 

Brown as his tooth; a little moth 

Late fatten’d in a piece of cloth, 

With wither’d cherries, mandrakes’ ears, 

Moles’ eyes; to these the slain stag’s tears ; 

The unctuous dewlaps of a snail ; 

The broke heart of a nightingale 

O’ercome in music ;— 


This done, commended 
Grace by his priest, the feast is ended.— 


Having considered insects as adding to the general stock of food, I 
shall next request your attention while I detail to you how far the medical 
science is indebted to them. Had I addressed you a century ago, I could 
have made this an ample history. Amongst scores of infallible panaceas, 
{ should have recommended the wood-louse as a solvent and aperient ; 
powder of silk-worm for vertigo and convulsions ; millepedes against the 
jaundice ; earwigs to strengthen the nerves; powdered scorpion for the 
stone and gravel; fly-water for disorders in the eyes; and the tick for 
erysipelas. I should have prescribed five gnats as an excellent purge ; 
wasps as diuretics ; lady-birds for the colic and measels ; the cock-chafer 
for the bite of a mad dog and the plague; and ants and their acid I 
should have loudly praised as incomparable against leprosy and deafness, 
as strengthening the memory, and giving vigor and animation to the whole 
bodily frame." In short, I could have easily added to the miserably 
meager list of modern pharmacopeias, a catalogue of approved insect- 
remedies for every disease and evil 

“that flesh is heir to!” 
But these good times are long gone by. You would, I fear, laugh at my 
prescriptions notwithstanding the great authorities I could cite in their 
favor ; and even doubt the efficacy of a more modern specific for tooth- 
ache, promulgated by a learned Italian professor®, who assures us that a 
finger once imbued with the juices of Rhinobatus antiodontalgicus (a 
name enough to give one the toothache to pronounce it) will retain its 
power of curing this disease for a twelvemonth! I must content myself, 
therefore, with expatiating on the virtues of the very few insects to which 


1 For this list of remedies, see Lesser, Z. ii. 171—173. * 


2 Gerbi. Storia Naturali d’un Nuov. Inset. 1794. The same virtues have been ascribed 
to Coccinella septempunctata, L. 


1. 
214 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


the sons of Hippocrates and Galen now deign to havgrecourse. At the 
same time I cannot help observing that their proscription of the remainder 
may have been too indiscriminate. Mankind are apt to run from one 
extreme to the other. From having ascribed too much efficacy to insect- 
remedies, we may now ascribe too little. Many insects emit very powerful 
odors, and some produce extraordinary effects upon the human frame ; 
and it is au idea not altogether to be rejected, that they may concentrate 
into a smaller compass the properties and virtues of the plants upon which 
they feed, and thus afford medicines more powerful in operation*than the 
plants themselves. [tis at least worth while to institute a set of experi- 
ments with this view. 

Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant (Formica bispinosa 
Oliv., fungosa F.) for a kind of lint collected by that insect from the 
Bombax or silk cotton-tree, which as a styptic is preferable to the puff- 
ball, and at Cayenne is successfully used to stop the blood in the most 
violent hemorrhages'; and gum ammoniac, according to Mr. Jackson’, 
oozes out of a plant like fennel, from incisions made in the bark by a 
beetle with a large horn. But, with these exceptions (in which the remedy 
is rather collected than produced by insects), and that of spiders’ webs, 
which are said to have been recently administered with success in ague, 
the only insects which directly supply us with medicine are some species 
of Cantharis and Mylabris. These beetles however amply make up in 
efficacy for their numerical insignificance ; and almost any article could 
be better spared from the Materia Medica than one of the former usually 
known under the name of Cantharides, which is not only of incalculable 
importance as a vesicatory, but is now administered internally in many 
cases with very good effect. In Europe, the insect chiefly used with this 
view is the Cantharis vesicatoria?; but in America the C. cinerea and 
vittata (which are extremely common and noxious insects, while the C. 
vesicatoria is sold there at sixteen dollars the pound) have been substi- 
tuted with great success, and are said to vesicate more speedily, and with 
less pain, at the same time that they cause no strangury*: and in China 
they have long employed the Mylabris cichorei, which seems to have been 
considered the most powerful vesicatory amongst the ancients, who however 
appear to have been acquainted with the common Cantharis vesicatoria 
also, and to have made use of it, as well as of Cetonta aurata and some 
other insects mentioned by Pliny.® Another species of Mylabris has been 
described by Major-General Hardwicke in the Asiatic Transactions®, 
plentiful in all parts of Bengal, Bahar, and Oude, which is fully as effica- 
cious as the common Spanish fly ; and in other parts of India Cantharis 
gigas and Violacea are employed, as is C. ruficeps in Sumatra and Java ; 
C. atomaria in Brazil; C. Syriaca in Arabia; and in some parts of 
Europe Lydus (Mylabris Fab.) trimaculatus.’ 


1 Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 48. 134. 

2 Jackson’s Marocco, 83. Some doubt however attaches to this statement, from the cir- 
cumstance pf the figure which Mr. Jackson gives of his beetle (Dibben Fashook), being 
clearly a mere copy of that of Mr. Bruce's Zimbd. 

3 This insect, generally so rare in England, appeared in the summer of 1837 in great 
numbers in Essex, Suffolk, and the Isle of Wight. (Eat. Mag. v. 208. 516.) 

4 Illiger, Mag. i. 256. 5 Hist. Nat. }. xix. c. 4. 6 Vol. v. 213. 

7 Westwood’s Mod. Class. of Ins. i. 297. See also Burmeister’s Manual of Ent. p. 562., 
who says that the species used by the ancients appears to have been Mylabris Fieslim 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 915 


But it is as supplying products valuable in the arts and manufactures, 
that we are chiefly indebted to insects. In adverting to them in this view, 
I shall not dwell upon the articles derived from a few species in particular 
districts, and confined to these alone, such as the soap which in some 
parts of Africa is manufactured from a beetle (Chlenius saponarius' ;) 
the oil, which Molina tells us, is obtained in Chili from large globular 
cellules found upon the wild rosemary, and supposed to be produced by a 
kind of gall-fly?; and the manure for which Scopoli informs us the hosts 
of Ephemere that annually emerge in the month of June from the Laz, a 
river in Carniola, are employed by the husbandmen, who think they have 
had a bad harvest unless every one has collected at least twenty loads.? 

Stil less is it my intention to detain you in considering the purpose to 
which in the West Indies and South America the fire-flies are put by the 
natives, who employ them as lanterns in their journeys, and lamps in their 
houses* ;—or the use as ornaments to which some insects are ingeniously 
applied by the ladies, who in China embroider their dresses with the elytra 
and crust of a brilliant species of beetle (Buprestis vittata) ; in Chili and , 
the Brazils form splendid necklaces of the golden Chrysomelide and bril- 
liant diamond beetles, &c.°; in some parts of the Continent string together 
for the same purpose the burnished violet-colored thighs of Geotrupes 
stercorarius, &c.°; and in India, as I am informed by Major Moor and 
Captain Green, even have recourse to fire-flies, which they enclose in 
gauze and use as ornaments for their hair when they take their evening 
walks. I shall confine my details to the more important and general pro- 
ducts which they supply to the arts, beginning with one indispensable to 
our present correspondence, and adverting in succession to the insects 
affording dyes, lac, wax, honey, and silk. 

No present that insects have made to the arts is equal in utility and 
universal interest, comes more home to our best affections, or is the instru- 
ment of producing more valuable fruits of human wisdom and genius, than 
the product of the animal to which I have just alluded. You will readily 
conjecture I mean the fly that gives birth to the gall-nut, from which ink 
is made. How infinitely are we indebted to this little creature, which at 
once enables us to converse with our absent friends and connections be 
their distance from us ever so great, and supplies the means by which, to 
use the poet’s language, we can 


« give to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name!’ 


Panz., which is very abundant in the south of Europe, and issometimes found in Germany. 
The active blistering principle in all these insects has been detected by M. Robiquet, and 
named by him Cantharidine, which has been ascertained by M. Bretonneau, and especially 
by M. Leclere, who has examined a great number of insects with this view, to be found 
amongst coleopterous insects of the family of Cantharide only, though not in all the species 
of this family, nor even in all the species of the same genus. M. Leclerc, who conceives 
that cantharidine is secreted by a peculiar apparatus, states, that it is not destroyed either 
by the action of the air or of time; and as it must exist in a spider of the United States 
(Tegenaria medicinalis Hentz; Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia, 1821, p. 53. pl. 5.), 
which is there extensively employed as a vesicatory, he examined if this principle is to be 
found in the Tegenari@ of France or in other spiders, but without success. (Leclerc, Essai 
sur les Epipastiques, Paris, 1835, quoted in Guérin, Bulletin Zoologique, i. 95.) 

1 Carabus Oliv., Entom. iii. 6Y. t. iii. f. 26. Compare Philanthropist, ii. 210. 

2 Molina’s Chili, i. 174. 3 Ent. Carniol. 264. 

4 Captain Green was accustomed to put a fire-fly under the glass of his watch, when he 
had occasion to rise very early for a march, which enabled him, without difficulty, to dis- 
tinguish the hour. 5 Molina, i. 171. 285. 6 Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 143. 


216 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


enabling the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the moralist, and the 
divine, to embody their thoughts for the amusement, instruction, direction, 
and reformation of mankind. ‘The insect which produces the gall-nut is 
of the genus Cynips of Linné, but was not known to him or to Fabricius. 
Olivier first described it under the name of Diplolepis galle tinctorie, 
The galls originate on the leaves of a species of oak ( Quercus infectoria) 
very common throughout Asia Minor, in many parts of which they are 
collected by the poorer inhabitants, and exported from Smyrna, Aleppo, 
and other ports in the Levant, as well as from the East Indies, whither a 
part of those collected are now carried. The galls most esteemed are 
those known in commerce under the name of blue galls, being the produce 
of the first gathering before the fly has issued from the gall. It will not 
be uninteresting to you to know, that from these when bruised may occa- 
sionally be obtained perfect specimens of the insect, one of which I lately 
procured in this way. The galls which have escaped the first searches, 
and from most of which the fly has emerged, are called white galls, and 
are of a very inferior quality, containing less of the astringent principle 
than the blue gall in the proportion of two to three.2 The white and 
blue galls are usually imported mixed in about equal proportions, and are 
then called “ galls in sorts.” If no substitute equal to galls as a constituent 
part of ink has been discovered, the same may be said of these productions 
as one of the most important of our dyeing materials constantly employed 
in dyeing black. It is true that this color may be communicated without 
galls, but not at once so cheaply and effectually, as is found by their 
continued large consumption, notwithstanding all the improvements in the 
art of dyeing. 

Other dyeing drugs are afforded by insects, the principal of which are 
Chermes, the Scarlet Grain of Poland, Cochineal, Lac-lake, and Lac-dye, 
all of which are furnished by different species of Coccus. 

The first of these, the Coceus Ilicis, found abundantly upon a small 
species of evergreen oak (Quercus coccifera), common in the south of 
France, and many other parts of the world, has been employed to impart 
a blood red or crimson dye to cloth from the earliest ages, and was known 
to the Pheenicians before the time of Moses under the name of Tola or 
Thola (ybyn), to the Greeks under that of Coccus (Koxzos), and to the 
Arabians and Persians under that of Kermes or Alkermes ; whence, as 
Beckmann has shown, and from the epithet vermiculatum given to it in the 
middle ages, when it was ascertained to be the produce of a worm, have 
sprung the Latin coccineus, the French cramoisi and vermeil, and our 
crimson and vermilion. It was most probably with this substance that the 
curtains of the tabernacle (Exod. xxvi. &c.) were dyed deep red (which 
the word scarlet, as our translators have rendered *:y pyin, then implied, 
not the color now so called, which was not known in James the First’s 
reign when the Bible was translated),—it was with this that the Grecians 
and Romans produced their crimson; and from the same source were 
derived the imperishable reds of the Brusselsand other Flemish tapestries. 
In short, previous to the discovery of cochineal, this was the material uni- 


‘ Encyclop. Insect. vi. 281. It had better, perhaps, as compound trivial names are bad, be 
called Cynips Scriptorum. 
* Olivier’s Travels in Egypt, &c. ii. 64. 


‘ 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. I17 


versally used for dyeing the most brilliant red then known; and though 
that production of the New World has, in some respects undeservedly', 
supplanted it in Europe, where it is little attended to except by the peas- 
antry of the provinces in which it is found, it still continues to be employ- 
ed in a great part of India and Persia.” 

The scarlet grain of Poland (Coccus polonicus) is found on the roots 
of the perennial knawel, (Scleranthus perennis, a scarce plant in this 
country, but abundant in the neighborhood of Elvedon in Suffolk,) and 
was at one time collected in large quantities for dyeing red in the Ukraine, 
Lithuania, &c. But though still employed by the Turks and Armenians 
for dyeing wool, silk, and hair, as well as for staining the nails of women’s 
fingers, it is now rarely used in Europe except by the Polish peasantry. 
A similar neglect has attended the Coccus found on the roots of Poteriwm 
Sanguisorba*, which was used by the Moors for dyeing silk and wool a 
rose color ; and the Coccus Uva-ursi, which with alum affords a crimson dye.* 

Cochineal, the Coccus cucti, is doubtless the most valuable product for 
which the dyer is indebted to insects, and, with the exception perhaps of 
indigo, the most important of dyeing materials. Though the Spaniards 
found it employed by the natives of Mexico, where alone it is cultivated, 
on their arrival in that country in 1518, its true nature was not accurately 
ascertained for nearly two centuries afterwards. Acosta, indeed, as early 
as 1530, and Herrara and Hernandez subsequently, had stated it to be an 
insect: but, led apparently by its external appearance, notwithstanding 
the conjectures of Lister and assertions of Pére Plumier to the contrary, 
it was believed by Europeans in general to be the seed of a plant, until 
Hartsoeker in 1694, Leeuwenhoek and De la Hire in 1704, and Geoffroy, 
ten years later, by dissections and microscopal observations, incontroverti- 
bly proved its real origin.® 

This insect, which comes to us in the form of a reddish shrivelled grain 
covered with a white powder or bloom, feeds on a particular kind of In- 
dian fig, called in Mexico, where alone cochineal is produced in any 
quantity, Nopal, which has always been supposed to be the Cactus cochin- 
elifer, but according to Humboldt is unquestionably a distinct species, 
which bears fruit internally white. 

Cochineal is chiefly cultivated in the Intendency of Oaxaca; and some 
plantations contain 50,000 or 60,000 nopals in lines, each being kept 
about four feet high for more easy access in collecting the dye. The 
cultivators prefer the most prickly varieties of the plant, as affording pro- 
tection to the cochineal from insects; to prevent which from depositing 
their eggs in the flower or fruit, both are carefully cut off. The greatest 
quantity, however, of cochineal employed in commerce, is produced in 
small nopaleries belonging to Indians of extreme poverty, called Napa- 


1 The color communicated by Kermes, with alum, the only mordant formerly employed, 
is blood red; but Dr. Bancroft found (i. 404.) that with the solution of tin used with cochi- 
neal it is capable of imparting a scarlet quite as brilliant as that dye, and perhaps more 
permanent. At the same time, however, as ten ortwelve pounds contain only as much 
coloring matter as one of cochineal, the latter at its ordinary price is the cheapest. 

2 Bochart, Hierozoic. ii. 1. iv.c. 27. Beckmann’s History of Inventions, Engl. Trans. ii. 
171—205. Bancroft on Permanent Colors, i. 393. See also Parkhurst’s Heb. Lexicon 
under »dp and yy. 

3 Rai. Hist. Plant. i. 401. * Bancroft, i. 401. 

5 Bancroft, i. 413. Reaum. iv. 88. 


19 


218 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


leros. ‘They plant their nopaleries in cleared groupd on the slopes of 
mountains or ravines two or three leagues distant from their villages; and 
when properly cleaned, the plants are in a condition to maintain the cochi- | 
neal in the third year. Asa stock, the proprietor in April or May pur- 
chases branches or joints of the Tuna de Castilla, laden with small cochi- 
neal insects recently hatched (Semilla). These branches, which may be 
bought in the market of Oaxaca for about three francs (2s. 6d.) the 
hundred, are kept for twenty days in the interior of their huts, and then 
exposed to the open air under a shed, where, from their su¢culency, they 
continue to live for several months. In August and September the mother 
cochineal insects, now big with young, are placed in nests made of a 
species of Tvllandsia called Paxtle, which are distributed upon the nopals. 
In about four months, the first gathering, yielding twelve for one, may be 
made, which in the course of the year is succeeded by two more profitable 
harvests. ‘This period of sowing and harvest refers chiefly to the districts 
of Sola and Zimatlan. In colder climates the semilla is not placed upon 
the nopals until October or even December, when it is necessary to shelter 
the young insects by covering the nopals with rush mats, and the harvests 
are proportionably later and unproductive. In the immediate vicinity of 
the town of Oaxaca the Nopaleros feed their cochineal insects in the 
plains from October to April, and at the beginning of the remaining 
months, during which it rains in the plains, transport them to their planta- 
tions of nopals in the neighboring mountains, where the weather is more 
favorable. 

Much care is necessary in the tedious operation of gathering the cochi- 
neal from the nopals, which is performed with a squirrel or stag’s tail by 
the Indian women, who for this purpose squat down for hours together 
beside one plant; and notwithstanding the high price of the cochineal, it 
is to be doubted if the cultivation would be profitable were the value of 
labor more considerable. 

The cochineal insects are killed either by throwing them into boiling 
water, by exposing them in heaps to the sun, or by placing them in the 
ovens (Temazealli) used for vapor baths. ‘The last of these methods, 
which is least in use, preserves the whitish powder on the body of the 
cochineal, which, being thus less subject to the adulterations so often 
practised by the Indians, bears a higher price both in America and 
Europe.? y 

The quantity annually exported from South America was said by Hum- 
boldt to be at the time he wrote 32,000 arrobas, there worth 500,040/. 
sterling? ;—a vast amount to arise from so small an insect, and well cal- 
culated to show us the absurdity of despising any animals on account of 
their minuteness. So important was the acquisition of this insect regarded, 
that the Court of Directors of the East India Company formerly offered a 
reward of 6000/. to any one who should introduce it into India, where 
hitherto the Company had only succeeded in procuring from Brazil the 
wild kind producing the sylvestre cochineal, which is of very inferior 
value. The true cochineal insect and the Cactus on which it feeds are 


1 Humboldt’s Political Essay on New Spain, iti. 72—79. ‘ 
2 Ibid. iii. 64.—Dr. Bancroft estimated the annual consumption of cochineal in Great 
Britain at about 750 bags, or 150,000 lbs. ; worth 375,0002. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 919 


said to have been of late years successfully introduced into Spain and the 
new French colony of Algiers, and now exist both in the stores of the 
Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and in those of King Leopold at Claremont.’ 

Lac is the produce of an insect formerly supposed to be a kind of ant 
or bee®, but now ascertained to be a species of Coccus ; and it is collected 
from various trees in India, where it is found so abundantly, that, were 
the consumption ten times greater than it is, it could be readily supplied. 
This substance is made use of in that country in the manufacture of 
beads, rings, and other female ornaments. Mixed with sand it forms 
grindstones; and added to lamp or ivory black, being first dissolved in 
water with the addition of a little borax, it composes an ink not easily 
acted upon when dry by damp or water. In this country, where it Is 
distinguished by the name stick-lac, when in its native state, unseparated 
from the twigs to which it adheres; seed-lac, when separated, pounded, 
and the greater part of the coloring matter extracted by water ; lump-lac, 
when melted and made into cakes; and shell-lac, when strained and 
formed into transparent lamine; it has hitherto been chiefly employed in 
the composition of varnishes, japanned ware, and sealing-wax: but for 
several years past it has been applied to a still more important purpose, 
originally suggested by Dr. Roxburgh—that of a substitute for cochineal 
in dyeing scarlet. The first preparations from it with this view were 
made in consequence of a hint from Dr. Bancroft, and large quantities 
of a substance termed lac-lake, consisting of the coloring matter of stick- 
lac precipitated from an alkaline lixivium by alum, were manufactured at 
Calcutta and sent to this country, where at first the consumption was so 
considerable, that in the three years previous to 1810, Dr. Bancroft states 
that the sales of it at the India House equalled in point of coloring matter 
half a million of pounds weight of cochineal. More recently, however, 
a new preparation of lac color, under the name of lac-dye, has been 
imported from India, which has been substituted for the lac-lake, and with 
such advantage, that the East India Company are said to have saved in a 
few months 14,060/. in the purchase of scarlet cloths dyed with this color 
and cochineal conjointly, and without any inferiority in the colar obtained.® 

Some other insects besides the Cocci afford dyes. Reaumur tells us, 
that in the Levant, Persia, and China, they use the galls of a particular 
species of Aphis for dyeing silk crimson, which he thinks might lead us to 
try experiments with those of our own country.4 That dyes might be 
thus obtained seems probable from an observation of Linné’s, in his Lap- 
land Tour, upon the galls produced by Aphis pini on the extremities of 
the leaves of the spruce-fir, which, he informs us, when arrived at maturity, 
burst asunder, and discharge an orange-colored powder which stains the 
clothes®; and Mr. Sheppard confirms this observation, the galls of this 
Aphis abounding upon fir trees in his garden. In fact, we are told that 
Terminalia citrina, a tree common in India, yields a species of gall, the 
product of an insect, which is sold in every market, being one of the 
most useful dyeing drugs known to the natives, who dye their best and 
most durable yellow with it.6 A species of mite (Trombidium tinctorium), 


1 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. iii. proc. ix. 2 Lesser, Z. ii. 165. 
? Bancroft on Permanent Colors, ii. 20. 49. 4 Reaum. iii. Preface, xxxi- 
* Lack. Lapp. i. 258. 6 Trans. of the Soc. of Arts, xxii. 411. 


220 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


a native of Guinea and Surinam, is also employed aga dye; and. it would 
be worth while to try whether our 7’. holosericeum, so remarkable for the 
dazzling brilliancy of its crimson and the beautiful velvet texture of its 
down, which seems nearly related to T. tinctorium, would not also afford 
a valuable tincture. It is not likely, perhaps, that many better and 
cheaper dyes than we now possess can be obtained from insects ; but 
Reaumur has suggested that water-colors of beautiful tints, not otherwise 
easily obtainable, might be procured from the excrements of the larve of 
the common clothes-moth, which retain the color of the wool they have 
eaten unimpaired in its lustre, and mix very well with water. To get a 
fine red, yellow, blue, green, or any other color or shade of color, we 
should merely have to feed our larve with cloth of that tint.? 

Wax,so valuable for many minor purposes, and deemed with us so 
indispensable to the comfort of the great, is of still more importance in 
those parts of Europe and America in which it forms a considerable 
branch of trade and manufacture, as an article of extensive use in the 
religious ceremonies of the inhabitants. Humboldt informs us, that not 
fewer than 25,000 arrobas, value upwards of 83,000/., were formerly 
annually exported from Cuba to New Spain, where the quantity consumed 
in the festivals of the church is immense, even in the smallest villages ; 
and that the total export of the same island in 1803 was not less than 
42,670 arrobas, worth upwards of 130,000/.2 Nearly the whole of the 
wax employed in Europe, and by far the greater part of that consumed in 
America, is the produce of the common hive-bee ; but in the latter quarter 
of the globe a quantity by no means trifling is obtained from various wild 
species. According to Don F’. de Azara, the inhabitants of Santiago del 
Estero gather every year not less than 14,000 pounds of a whitish wax 
from the trees of Chaco.® 

In China wax is also produced by another insect, which from the de- 
scription of it by the Abbé Grosier seems to be a species of Coccus. With 
this insect the Chinese stock the two kinds of tree (Kan-la-chuand Choni- 
la-chu), on which alone it is found, and which always afterwards retain 
it. ‘Towards the beginning of winter small tumors are perceived, which 
increase until as big as a walnut. These are the nests (abdomens of the 
females) filled with the eggs that are to give birth to the Cocci, which 
when hatched disperse themselves over the leaves, and perforate the bark 
under which they retire. The wax (called Pe-la, white wax, because so 
by nature,) begins to appear about the middle of June. At first a few 
filaments like fine soft wool are perceived, rising from the bark round the 
body of the insect, and these increase more and more until the gathering, 
which takes place before the first hoar frost in September. ‘The wax is carried 
to court, and reserved for the emperor, the princes, and chief mandarins. If 
an ounce of it be added to a pound of oil, it forms a wax little inferior to that 
made by bees. The physicians employ it in several diseases; and the 
Chinese, when about to speak in public, and assurance is necessary, previ- 
ously eat an ounce of it to prevent swoonings*; a use of it for which happily 
our less diffident orators have no call. This account is in the main con- 
firmed by Geomelli Careri, except that he calls the wax insect a worm 


? Reaum. iii. 95. ® Political Essay, iii. 62. 
3 Voyage dans l’ Amer. Merid. i. 162. 4 Grosier’s China, i. 439. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 99] 


which bores to the pith of certain trees ; and says that it produces a sufli- 
cient supply for the whole empire, the different provinces of which are 
furnished from Xantung, where it is bred in the greatest perfection, with a 
stock of eggs.! -A very different origin, however, is assigned to the Pe-la 
by Sir George Staunton, who informs us that it is produced by a species 
of Cicada (lata limbata), which in its larva state feeds upon a plant like 
the privet, strewing upon the stem a powder, which when collected forms 
the wax.” But as he merely states that this powder was “ supposed” to 
form it, and does not himself appear to have made the experiment of dis- 
solving it in oil, it is most probable that his information was incorrect, and 
that Grosier’s statement is the true one. | 

This probability is nearly converted into certainty by the fact that many 
Aphides and Cocci secrete a wax-like substance, and that a kind of wax 
very analogous to the Pe-la, and of the same class with bees’ wax, only 
containing more carbon, is actually produced in India by a nondescript 
species of Coccus remarkable for providing itself with a small quantity of 
honey like our bees. ‘This substance, for specimens of which I am indebted 
to the kindness of Sir Joseph Banks, was first noticed by Dr. Anderson, 
and called by him white lac. It could be obtained in any quantity from 
the neighborhood of Madras, and at a much cheaper rate than bees’ wax : 
but the experiments of Dr. Pearson do not afford much ground for suppos- 
ing that it can be advantageously employed in making candles.2 De 
Azara speaks of a firm white wax apparently similar, and the produce of 
an insect of the same tribe, which is collected in South America in the 
form of pearl-like globules from the small branches of the Quabirdmy, a 
small shrub two or three feet high.* 

Insects in some countries not only furnish the natives with wax but 
with resin, which is used instead of tar for their ships. Molina informs us 
that, at Coquimbo in Chili, resin, either the product of an insect or the 
consequence of an insect’s biting off the buds of a particular species of 
Origanum, is collected in large quantities. The insect in question is a 
small smooth red caterpillar about half an inch long, which changes into a 
yellowish moth with black stripes upon the wings (Phal. cerarta Molina). 
Early in the spring vast numbers of these caterpillars collect on the branches 
of the Chila, where they form their cells of a kind of soft white wax or 
resin, in which they undergo their transformations. ‘This wax, which is at 
first very white, but by degrees becomes yellow and finally brown, is col- 
lected in autumn by the inhabitants, who boil it in water, and make it up 
into little cakes for market. 

Honey, another well-known product of insects, has lost much of its 
importance since the discovery of sugar; yet at the present day, whether 
considered as a delicious article of feod, or the base of a wholesome 
vinous beverage of home manufacture, it is of no mean value even in this 
country ; and in many inland parts of Europe, where its saccharine sub- 
stitute is much dearer than with us, few articles of rural economy, not of 
primary importance, would be dispensed with more reluctantly. In the 
Ukraine some of the peasants have 400 or 500 bee-hives, and make more 


1 Quoted in Southey’s Thalaba, ii. 166. 2 Embassy to China, i. 400. 
3 Phil. Trans. 1794. xxi. 4 Voyage dans ? Amer. Merid. i. 164. 
5 Molina’s Chili, i. 174. 

is 


222 "DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


profit of their bees than of corn’; and in Spain thesnumber of bee-hives 
is said to be incredible ; a single parish priest was known to possess 5000.” 

The domesticated or hive-bee, to which we are indebted for this article, 
is the same according to Latreille in every part of Europe, except in 
some districts of Italy, where a different species (Apis ligustica of Spinola) 
is kept—the same probably that is cultivated in the Morea and the isles 
of the Archipelago.’ Honey is obtained, however, from many other 
species both wild and domestic. What is called rock honey in some 
parts of America, which is as clear as water and very thin, is the produce 
of wild bees, which suspend their clusters of thirty or forty waxen cells, 
resembling a bunch of grapes, to a rock*: and in South America large 
quantities are collected from the nests built in trees by Trigona Amalthea, 
and other species of this genus recently separated from Apis®; under 
which probably should be included the Bamburos, whose honey, honest 
Robert Knox informs us, whole towns in Ceylon go into the woods to 
gather. According to Azara, one of the chief articles of food of the 
Indians who live in the woods of Paraguay is wild honey.’ Captain 
Green observes that, in the island of Bourbon, where he was stationed 
for some time, there is a bee which produces a kind of honey much 
esteemed there. It is quite of a green color, of the consistency of oil, 
and to the usual sweetness of honey superadds a certain fragrance. It is 
called green honey, and is exported to India, where it bears a high price.® 
One of the species that has probably been attended to ages before our 
hive-bee, is Apis fasciata of Latreille, a kind so extensively cultivated in 
Egypt, that Niebuhr states he fell in upon the Nile, between Cairo and 
Damietta, with a convoy of 4000 hives, which were transporting from a 
region where the season for flowers had passed, to one where the spring 
was later.’ Columella says that the Greeks in like manner sent their bee- 
hives every year from Achaia into Attica; and a similar custom is not 
unknown in Italy, and even in this country in the neighborhood of heaths. 
In Madagascar, according to Latreille, the inhabitants have domesticated 
Apis unicolor ; A. indica is cultivated in India at Pondicherry and in 
Bengal ; A. Adansonit Latr. at Senegal!®; and Fabricius thinks that A. 
acraensis (Centris Syst. Piez.) laboriosa, and others in the East and 
West Indies, might be domesticated with greater advantage than even 
A, mellifica.” . 

Here also must be mentioned the manna used as an agreeable food in 
the East, which, though not directly produced by insects, is caused to 
flow from the Tamarix mannifera by the punctures of a small species of 
Coccus.” 

The last, and doubtless the most valuable, product of insects to which 
I have to advert is Silk. To estimate justly the importance of this article, 
it is not sufficient to view it as an appendage of luxury unrivalled for rich- 


1 Communications to the Board of Agricult. vii. 286. 2 Mills on Bees, 77. 

3 Latr. in Humboldt and Bonpland, Recueil d’Observ. de Zoologie, &c. (Paris, 1805), 300. 
4 Hill in Swammerdam, i. 181. note. 5 Latr. ubi supr. 300, 

® Knox’s Ceylon, 25. 7 Voy. dans I’ Amer. Merid. i, 162. 


8 M. Latreille appears to have described this bee under the name of Apis unicolor. Mém. 
sur les Abeilles, 8. 39. 

® Latr. Hist. Nat. xiv. 20. 

© Latr. in Humboldt and Bonpland, Recueil, &c. 302. 

1 Vorlesungen, 324, Burmeister, Manual of Ent. 561. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 993 


ness, lustre, and beauty, and without which courts would lose half their 
splendor. We must consider it, what it actually is, as the staple article 
of cultivation in many large provinces in the south of Europe, amongst 
the inhabitants of which the prospect of a deficient crop causes as great 
alarm as a scanty harvest of grain with us; and after giving employment 
to tens of thousands in its first production and transportation, as furnishihg 
subsistence to hundreds of thousands more in its final manufacture, and 
thus becoming one of the most important wheels that give circulation to 
national wealth.! 

But we must not confine our view to Europe. When silk was so scarce 
in this country, that James I., while King of Scotland, was forced to beg 
of the Earl of Mar the loan of a pairof silk stockings to appear in before 
the English ambassador, enforcing his request with the cogent appeal, 
“For ye would not, sure, that your king should appear as a scrub before 
strangers ;” nay, long before this period, even prior to the time that silk 
was valued at its weight of gold at Rome, and the Emperor Aurelian 
refused his empress a robe of silk because of its dearness—the Chinese 
peasantry in some of the provinces, millions in number, were clothed with 
this material; and for some thousand years to the present time, it has 
been both there and in India (where a class whose occupation was to 
attend silk-worms appears to have existed from time immemorial, being 
mentioned in the oldest Sanscrit books,*) one of the chief objects of 
cultivation and manufacture. You will admit, therefore, that when nature 

“set to work millions of spinning worms, 

That in their green shops weave the smooth-hair’d silk 

To deck her sons,” 
she was conferring upon them a benefit scarcely inferior to that consequent 
upon the gift of wool to the fleecy race, or a fibrous rind to the flax or 
hemp plants; and that mankind is not under much less obligation to Pam- 
phila, who, according to Aristotle, was the discoverer of the art of un- 
winding and weaving silk, than to the inventors of the spinning of those 
products.‘ 

It seems to have been in Asia that silk was first manufactured ; and it 
was from thence that the ancients obtained it, calling it, from the name of 
the country whence it was supposed to be brought, Sericum. Of its origin 
they were in a great measure ignorant, some supposing it to be the entrails 
of a spider-like insect with eight legs, which was fed for four years upon 
a kind of paste, and then with the leaves of the green willow, until it 
burst with fat®; others, that it was the produce of a worm which built 
clay nests, and collected wax®; Aristotle, with more truth, that it was 


? The following facts and calculations from the Courier de Lyon, 1840, as to the silk 
manufactured at Lyons, are worth preserving: — Raw silk annually consumed there one 
million of kilogrammes, equal to 2,205,714 pounds English, on which the waste in manu- 
facturing is five per cent. As four cocoons produce one graine (grain) of silk, four thou- 
sand millions of cocoons are annually consumed, making the number of caterpillars reared 
(including the average allowance for caterpillars dying, bad ‘cocoons, and those kept for 
eggs) 4,292,400,000. The length of the silk of one cocoon averages 500 metres (1526 feet 
English), so that the length of the total quantity of silk spun at Lyons is 6,500,000,U00,000 
(or six and a half billions) of English feet, equal to fourteen times the mean radius of the 
earth’s orbit ; or 5494 times the radius of the moon’s orbit; or 52.505 times the equatorial 
circumference of the earth ; or 200,000 times the circumference of the moon. 

2 Colebrook in Asiatic Researches, v. 61. " 3 Milton’s Comus. 

4 Hist. Animal. 1. v.c. 19. 5 Pausanias, quoted by Goldsmith, vi. 80. 

§ Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1, xi. c. 22. 


224 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 


unwound from the pupa of a large horned caterpillar. Nor was the mode 
of producing and manufacturing this precious material known to Europe 
until long after the Christian era, being first learnt about the year 550, by 
two monks, who procured in India the eggs of the silk-worm moth, with 
which, concealing them in hollow canes, they hastened to Constantinople, 
where they speedily multiplied, and were subsequently introduced into 
Italy, of which country silk was long a peculiar and staple commodity. 
It was not cultivated in France until the time of Henry 1V., who, con- 
sidering that mulberries grew in his kingdom as well as in Italy, resolved, 
in opposition to the opinion of Sully, to attempt introducing it, and fully 
succeeded. 

The whole of the silk produced in Europe, and the greater proportion 
of that manufactured in China, is obtained from the common silk-worm ; 
but in India considerable quantities are procured froin the cocoons of the 
Jarve of other moths. Of these the most important species known are 
the Tusseh and Arindy silk-worms, of which an interesting history is given 
by Dr. Roxburgh in the Linnean Transactions.? ‘These insects are both 
natives of Bengal. The first (Saturnia Paphia) feeds upon the leaves 
of the Jujube tree (Rhamnus Jujuba), or Byer of the Hindoos, and of 
the Terminalia alata glabra, Roxburgh, the Asscen of the Hindoos, and 
is found in such abundance as from time immemorial to have afforded a 
constant supply of a very durable, coarse, dark-colored silk, which is 
woven into a cloth called Tussehdoot’hies, much worn by the Brahmins 
and other sects, and would, doubtless, be highly useful to the inhabitants 
of many parts of America, and of the south of Europe, where a light 
and cool, and at the same time cheap and durable dress, such as this silk 
furnishes, is much wanted. ‘The durability of this silk is indeed astonish- 
ing. After constant use for nine or ten years it does not show any signs 
of decay. ‘These insects are thought by the natives of so much conse- 
quence, that they guard them by day to preserve them from crows and 
other birds, and by night from the bats. ‘The Arindy silk-worm, (Sa- 
turnia Cynthia Drury,) which feeds solely on the leaves of the Palma 
Christi, produces remarkably soft cocoons, the silk of which is so delicate 
and flossy, that it is impracticable to wind it off: it is, therefore, spun 
like cotton ; and the thread thus manufactured is woven into a coarse kind of 
white cloth of-a loose texture, but of still more incredible durability than 
the last, the life of one person being seldom sufficient to wear out a gar- 
ment made of it. It is used not only for clothing, but for packing fine 
cloths, &c. Some manufacturers in England to whom the silk was shown 
seemed to think that it could be made here into shawls equal to any 
received from India. A moth allied to this last species, but distinct, has 
been described and figured by Colonel Sykes, who met with its leather- 
like cocoons composed of silk so strong, that a single filament supported a 
weight of 198 grains, in that part of the Deccan in India lying between 
the sources and junction of the Béma and Mota Mola rivers. These 
cocoons are called kolésurra by the Mahrattas, who use them cut into 
thongs, which are more durable than leather for binding the matchlock 

1 Aristot. ubi supr. He does not expressly say the pupa, but this we must suppuse. The 
larva he means could not be the common silkworm, since he describes it as large, and 


having as it were horns. 
? vil. 33—48, Compare Lord Valentia’s Travels, i. 78. 


DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 295 


barrel to the stock ; but as far as Colonel Sykes could ascertain, no use 
is made of the silk in Western India, though there can be little doubt that 
it might be advantageously produced, as the caterpillars which spin it feed 
indiscriminately on the Teak tree (Tectona grandis), the Mulberry 
(Morus Indica), the Bor (Zizyphus jwuba), and the Osana (Terminalia 
alata glabra). : 

Other species, as may be inferred from an extract of a letter given in 
Young’s Annals of Agriculture?, are known in China, and have. been 
introduced into India. ‘ We have obtained,” says the writer, “a monthly 
silk-worm from China, which I have reared with my own hands, and in 
twenty-five days have had the cocoons in my basins, and by the twenty- 
ninth or thirty-first day a new progeny feeding in my trays. ‘This makes 
it a mine to whoever would undertake the cultivation of it.” 

Whether it will ever be expedient to attempt the breeding of the larve 
of any European moths, as Catocala pacta, Sponsa, &c. proposed with 
this view by Fabricius*, seems doubtful, though certainly many of them 
afford a very.strong silk, and might be readily propagated ; and I have 
now in my possession some thread more like cotton than silk spun by the 
larva of a moth, which when I was a very young entomologist I observed 
(if my memory does not deceive me) upon the Ewuonymus, and from the 
twigs of which (not the cocoon) I unwound it. It is even asserted that 
in Germany a manufacture of silk from the cocoons of the emperor moth 
(Saturnia Pavonia major) was at one time established.*- There seems 
no question, however, that silk might be advantageously derived from 
many native silk-worms in America. An account is given in the Philo- 
sophical Transactions of one found there, whose cocoon is not only heavier 
and more productive of silk than that of the common kind, but is so much 
stronger that twenty threads will carry an ounce more.? Don Luis Neé 
observed on Psidium pomiferum and pyriferum ovate nests of caterpillars 
eight inches long, of grey silk, which the inhabitants of Chilpancingo, 
Tixtala, &c., in America, manufacture into stockings and handkerchiefs.® 
Great numbers of similar nests of a dense tissue, resembling Chinese 
paper, of a brilliant whiteness, and formed of distinct and separable layers, 
the interior being the thinnest and extraordinarily transparent, were observ- 
ed by Humboldt in the provinces of Mechoacan and the mountains of 
Santarosa, at a height of 10,500 feet above the level of the sea, upon the 
Arbutus Madréno, and other trees. The silk of these nests, which are 
the work of the social caterpillars of a Bombyx (B. Madréno), was an 
object of commerce even in the time of Montezuma ; and the ancient 
Mexicans pasted together the interior layers, which may be written upon 
without preparation, to form a white glossy pasteboard. Handkerchiefs 
are still manufactured of it in the Intendency of Oaxaca.’ De Azara 
states that in Paraguay, a spider, which is found to near the thirtieth degree 
of latitude, forms a spherical cocoon (for its eggs) an inch in diameter, of 
a yellow silk, which the inhabitants spin on account of the permanency of 
the color. And according to M. B. de Lozieres, large quantities of a 


1 Trans. Royal Asiat. Soc. 1834, vol. iii. 2 xxiii. 235. 
3 Vorlesungen, 325. 4 Latr. Hist. Nat. xiv. 150. 
> Pullein in Phil. Trans. 1759. 54. 8 Annals of Botany, ii. 104. 


7 Political Essay on N. Spain, iii. 59. 
8 Voyage dans l’ Amer. Merid. i. 212. It may here be observed as a benefit derived by the 


226 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM |NSECTS. 


very beautiful silk, of dazzling whiteness, may be_collected from the 
cocoons even of the Ichneumons that destroy the jarve of some moth in 
the West Indies, which feed upon the indigo and cassada.! 

It is probable, too, that other articles besides silk might be obtained 
from the larve which usually produce it, particularly cements and varnishes 
of different kinds, some hard, others elastic, from their gum and silk 
reservoirs, from which it is said the Chinese procure a fine varnish, and 
fabricate what is called by anglers Indian grass.2 The diminutive 
size of the animal will be thought no objection, when we recollect that 
the very small quantity of purple dye afforded by the Purpura of the 
ancients did not prevent them from collecting it. 


I now conclude this long series of letters on the injuries caused by 
insects to man, and the benefits which he derives from them; and I think 
you will readily admit that I have sufficiently made good my position 
that the study of agents which perform such important functions in the 
economy of nature must be worthy of attention. Our subsequent cor- 
respondence will be devoted to the most interesting traits in their history 
—as their affection to their young, their food and modes of procuring it, 
habitations, societies, &c. 


Tam, &c. 


higher walks of philosophy from insects, that astronomers employ the strongest thread of 
spiders, the one namely that supports the web, for the divisions of the micrometer. By its 
ductility this thread acquires about a fifth of its ordinary length. Nouv. Dict. d’ Hist. Nat. 
ii. 280. 

1 American Phil. Trans. v. 325. 

® Anderson’s Recreations in Agriculture, &c. iv. 399. 


227 


LETTER XI. “ 
ON THE AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


Amonest the larger animals, every observer of nature has witnessed, with 
admiration, that love of their offspring which the beneficent Creator, with 
equal regard to the happiness of the parent and the progeny, has inter- 
woven in the constitution of his creatures. Who that has any sensibility, 
has not felt his heart dilate with gratitude to the Giver of all good, in 
observing amongst the domestic animals which surround him, the effects 
of this divine storge, so fruitful of the most delightful sensations? Who 
that is not a stock or a stone has read unmoved the anecdote recorded in 
books of Natural History, of the poor bitch, which in the agonies of a 
cruel dissection licked with parental fondness her new-born offspring ; or 
the affecting account of the she-bear related in Phipp’s Voyage to the 
North Pole, which, herself severely wounded by the same shot that killed 
her cubs, spent her last moments in tearing and laying before them the 
food she had collécted, and died licking their wounds ? 

These feelings you must have experienced, but it has scarcely occurred 
to you that you would have any room for exercising ,them in your new 
pursuit. You have not, I dare say, suspected that any similar example 
could have been adduced amongst insects, to which at the first glance there 
seems even something absurd in attributing any thing like parental affec- 
tion. An animal not so big perhaps as a grain of wheat, feel love for its 
offspring—how preposterous ! we are ready to exclaim. Yet the excla- 
mation would be very much misplaced. Nothing is more certain than 
that insects are capable of feeling quite as much attachment to their 
offspring as the largest quadrupeds. ‘They undergo as severe privations 
in nourishing them; expose themselves toas great risk in defending them; 
and in.the very article of death exhibit as much anxiety for their preserva- 
tion. Not that this can be said of all insects. A very large proportion 
of them are doomed to die before their young come into existence. But 
in these the passion is not extinguished. It is merely modified, and its 
direction changed. And when you witness the solicitude with which they 
provide for the security and sustenance of their future young, you can 
scarcely deny to them love for a progeny they are never destined to 
behold. Like affectionate parents in similar circumstances, their last 
efforts are employed in providing for the children that are to succeed 
them. 


I. Observe the motions of that common white butterfly which you see 
flying from herb to herb. You perceive that it is not food she is in pursuit 
of: for flowers have no attraction for her. Her object is the discovery of 
a plant that will supply the sustenance appropriated by Providence to her 
young, upon which to deposit her eggs. Her own food has been honey 


¢ 


228 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


drawn from the nectary of a flower. This, thereforey or its neighborhood, 
we might expect would be the situation she would select for them. But 
no: as if aware that this food would be to them poison, she is in search 
of some plant of the cabbage tribe. But how is she to distinguish it from 
the surrounding vegetables? She is taught of God! Led by an instinct 
far more unerring than the practised eye of the botanist, she recognizes 
the desired plant the moment she approaches it, and upon this she places 
her precious burden ; yet not without the further precaution of ascertain- 
ing that it is not pre-occupied by the eggs of some other butterfly! Hav- 
ing fulfilled this duty, from which no obstacle short of absolute impossi- 
bility, no danger however threatening, can divert her, the affectionate 
mother dies. . 

This may serve as one instance of the solicitude of insects for their 
future progeny. But almost every species will supply examples similar in 
principle, and in their particular circumstances even more extraordinary. 
In every case (except in some remarkable instances of mistakes of 
instinct, as they may be termed, which will be subsequently adverted to) 
the parent unerringly distinguishes the food suitable for her offspring, how- 
ever dissimilar to her own; or at least invariably places her eggs, often 
defended from external injury by a variety of admirable contrivances, in 
the exact spot where, when hatched, the larve can have access to it.—— 
The dragon fly is an inhabitant of the air, and could not exist in water: 
yet in this last element, which is alone adapted for her young, she ever 
carefully drops her eggs. The larve of the gad-fly (Cstrus equz), whose 
history has been before described to you, are destined to live in the 
stomach of the horse. How shall the parent, a two-winged fly, convey 
them thither? By a mode truly extraordinary. Flying round the animal, 
she curiously poises her body for an instant while she glues a single egg to 
one of the hairs of his skin, and repeats this process until she has fixed 
in a similar way many hundred eggs. These, after a few days, on the 
application of the slightest moisture attended by warmth, hatch into little 
grubs. Whenever therefore the horse chances to lick any part of his body 
to which they are attached, the moisture of the tongue discloses one or 
more grubs, which adhering to it by means of the saliva are conveyed into 
the mouth, and thence find their way into the stomach. But here a ques- 
tion occurs to you. It is but a small portion of the horse’s body which 
he can reach with his tongue: what, you ask, becomes of the eggs depos- 
ited on other parts? I will tell you how the gad-fly avoids this dilemma ; 
and I will then ask you if she does not discover a provident forethought, 
a depth of instinct, which almost casts into shade the boasted reason of 
man? She places her eggs only on those parts of the skin which the 
horse is able to reach with his tongue; nay, she confines them almost 
exclusively to the knee or the shoulder, which he is sure to lick. What 
could the most refined reason, the most precise adaptation of means to an 
end, do more ?! 

Not less admirable is the parental instinct of that vast tribe of insects 
already introduced to you by the name of Ichneumons, whose young are 
destined to feed upon the living bodies of other insects. 'These, as you 
know, are so numerous, that scarcely an insect exists, which in its larva 


1 Clark in Linn. Trans. iii. 304. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 299 


state is not exposed to the attacks of one or other of them; and even the 
pup, nay the very eggs of these animals, are not safe from their insidious 
manceuvres. The size of the different species varies in proportion to that 
of the bodies which are to be their food; some being so inconceivably 
small that the egg of a butterfly not bigger than a pin’s head is of suff- 
cient magnitude to nourish two of them to maturity; others so large, that 
the body of a full-grown caterpillar is not more than enough for one. 
They are the larve of these Ichneumons which make such havoc of our 
pigmy tribes: the perfect insect is a four-winged fly, which takes no other 
food than a little honey ; and the great object of the female is to discover 
a proper nidus for her eggs. In search of this she is in constant motion. 
Is the caterpillar of a butterfly or moth the appropriate food for her 
young? You see her alight upon the plants where they are most usually 
to be met with, run quickly over them, carefully examining every leaf, and, 
having found the unfortunate object of her search, insert her sting into its 
flesh and there deposit an egg. In vain her victim, as if conscious of its 
fate, writhes its body, spits out an acid fluid, menaces with its tentacula, 
or brings into action the other organs of defence with which it is provided. 
The active Ichneumon braves every danger, and does not desist Until her 
courage and address have insured subsistence for one of her future progeny. 
Perhaps, however, she discovers, by a sense the existence of which we 
perceive, though we have no conception of its nature, that she has been 
forestalled by some precursor of her own tribe, that has already buried an 
egg in the caterpillar she is examining. In this case she leaves it, aware 
that it would not suffice for the support of two, and proceeds in search of 
some other yet unoccupied. The process is of course varied in the case 
of those minute species of which several, sometimes as many as 150, can 
subsist in a single caterpillar. The little Ichneumon then repeats her 
operations, until she has darted into her victim the requisite number 
of eggs. 

The larve hatched from the eggs thus ingeniously deposited, find a 
delicious banquet in the body of the caterpillar, which is sure eventually 
to fall a victim to their ravages. So accurately, however, is the supply of 
food proportioned to the demand, that this event does not take place until 
the young Ichneumons have attained their full growth: when the cater- 
pillar either dies, or, retaining just vitality enough to assume the pupa state, 
then finishes its existence; the pupa disclosing not a moth or a butterfly, 
but one or more full-grown Ichneumons. 

In this strange and apparently cruel operation one circumstance is truly 
remarkable. The larve of the Ichneumon, though every day, perhaps 
for months, it gnaws the inside of the caterpillar, and though at last it has 
devoured almost every part of it except the skin and intestines, carefully 
all this time avoids wyuring the vital organs, as if aware that its own exis- 
tence depends on that of the insect on which it preys! ‘Thus the cater- 
pillar continues to eat, to digest, and to move, apparently little injured, to 
the last, and only perishes when the parasitic grub within it no longer 
requires its aid. What would be the impression which a similar instance 
amongst the race of quadrupeds would make upon us? If, for example, 
an animal—such as some impostors have pretended to carry within 


? Bonnet, ii, 344. 
20 


230 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


them—should be found to feed upon the inside of a dog, devouring only 
those parts not essential to life, while it cautiously left uninjured the heart, 
arteries, lungs, and intestines,—should we not regard such an instance as 
a perfect prodigy, as an example of instinctive forbearance almost 
miraculous ? 

Some Ichneumons, instead of burying their eggs in the body of the 
larve that are to serve their young for food, content themselves with gluing 
them to the skin of their prey. This is the case with Scolia flavifrons, 
which my learned entomological friend M. Passerini of Florence has found 
places its eggs on the larva of a large beetle (Oryctes nasicornis), upon which 
when hatched the larva of the Scotia feeds, by introducing the three first 
segments of its body into the belly of its victim, always between the sixth 
and seventh segment, so that this insect is a semi-internal parasite.’ 
Another tribe, whose activity and perseverance are equally conspicuous, 
which includes the beautiful genus Chrysis and many other hymenopterous 
and dipterous insects, imitating the insidious cuckoo, contrive to introduce 
their eggs into the nests in which bees and other insects have deposited 
theirs. With this view they are constantly on the watch, and the moment 
the unsuspecting mother has quitted her cell for the purpose of collecting 
a store of food or materials, glide into it and leave an egg, the germ of a 
future assassin of the larva, that is to spring from that deposited by its side. 

The females of the insects of which we have been speaking, in provid- 
ing for their offspring, are saved the trouble of furnishing them with any 
habitation. Either they occupy that of another insect, or find a con- 
venient abode within the body of that on which they feed. But upon the 
maternal affection of another large hymenopterous tribe, belonging to 
Latreille’s Family of Burrowers (Fossores), whose young in like manner 
feed on other insects, is imposed the arduous task not merely of col- 
lecting a supply of food, but of inclosing it along with their eggs in cells 
or burrows often of considerable depth, and dug with great labor in sand, 
wood, or the solid earth. 

The general economy of these insects is similar. Having first dug a 
cylindrical cavity of the requisite dimensions, and deposited an egg at the 
bottom, they inclose along with it one or more caterpillars, spiders, or 
other insects, each particular species for the most part selecting a distinct 
kind, as a provision for the young one when hatched, and sufficiently 
abundant to nourish it until it becomes a pupa. Many thus furnish seve- 
ral cells. This process, however, is varied by different species, some of 
whose operations are worthy of a more detailed description. 

One of the most early histories of the procedure of an insect of this kind, 
probably the common sand-wasp (Ammophila vulgaris), is left us by the 
excellent Ray, who observed it along with his friend Willughby. On the 
22d of June 1667, he tells us, they noticed this insect dragging a green 
caterpillar thrice as big as itself, which after thus conveying about fifteen 
feet, it deposited at the entrance of a hole previously dug in the sand. 
Then removing a pellet of earth from its mouth, it descended into the 
cavity, and, presently returning, dragged along with it the caterpillar. 
After staying awhile it again ascended, then rolled pieces of earth into 


oo sulle Larve, Ninfe, d-c. (Pise, 1840). Guérin-Méneville, Révue Zoolog. 1841, 
p. 240. 


EE 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 231 


the hole, at intervals scratching the dust into it like a dog with its fore 
feet, and entering it as if to press down and consolidate the mass, flying 
also once or twice to an adjoining fir-tree, possibly to procure resin for 
agglutinating the whole. Having filled the burrow to a level with the 
surrounding earth so as to conceal the entrance, it took two fir-leaves lying 
at hand, and placed them near the orifice as if to mark the place.—Such 
is the anecdote left on record by our illustrious countryman, of whose 
accuracy of observation there can be no doubt.t. Who that reads it can 
refrain from joining in the reflection which it calls from him, “ Quis hee 
non mihi miretur et stupeat? Quis hwusmodi cpera mera machine posstt 
attribuere ?”’? . 

I myself, when walking with a friend some months ago, observed nearly 
similar manceuvres performed by another hymenopterous insect which may 
be called a spider-wasp (Pompilus), which attracted our attention as it 
was dragging a spider to its cell. The attitude in which it carried its 
prey, namely with its feet constantly upwards ; its singular mode of walk- 
ing, which was backwards, except for a foot or two when it went forwards, 
moving by jerks and making a sort of pause every few steps; and the 
astonishing agility with which, notwithstanding its heavy burthen, it glided 
over or between the grass, weeds, and other numerous impediments in the 
rough path along which it passed—together formed a spectacle which we 
contemplated with admiration. The distance which we thus observed it 
to traverse was not less than twenty-seven feet, and great part of its jour- 
ney had probably been performed before we saw it. Once or twice, 
when we first noticed it, it laid down the spider, and making a small 
circuit returned and took it up again. But for the ensuing twenty or 
twenty-five feet it never stopped, but proceeded in a direct line for its 
burrow with the utmost speed. When opposite the hole, which was in a 
sand bank by the way side, it made a sharp turn, as-evidently aware of 
being in the neighborhood of its abode, but when advanced a little further 
laid down its burthen and went to reconnoitre. At first it climbed up the 
bank, but, as if discovering that this was not the direction, soon returned, 
and after another survey perceiving the hole, took up the spider and 
dragged it in after it. 

In the two instances above given, one dead caterpillar or spider only 
was deposited in each hole. But an insect described by Reaumur under 
the name of the mason-wasp (Epipone spinipes), very common in some 
parts of England, after having excavated a burrow, with an ingenuity to 
which on a future occasion I shall draw your attention, places along with 
its egg as food for the future young, about twelve little green grubs without 
feet, which it has carefully selected full grown and conveyed without 
injuring them. You will inquire, Why this difference of procedure? 
With regard to the choice of a number of small grubs rather than of one 
large caterpillar, what I have said in a former letter on the subject of 


1 The Rev. Dr. Sutton of Norwich made similar observations upon the proceedings ot 
this insect in his garden for two successive seasons. 

* Rai. Hist. Ins. 254. For an interesting account of the procedures of a female of this 
species in dragging a very large spider up the nearly perpendicular side of a sand-bank at 
least twenty feet high, as well as of other curious facts in the economy of sand-wasps, the 
reader is referred to the very excellent “ Essay on the Indigenous Fossorial Hymenoptera,” 
by W. E. Shuckard, Esq. p. 77, &c. 


232 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


different species of this tribe being appointed to prey upon and thus keep 
within due limits the larve of different kinds of inseets, will be a sufficient 
answer. But one circumstance creditable to the talents of the mason- 
wasp as a skilful purveyor should not be omitted, namely, that the number 
of grubs laid up is not always the same, but is exactly proportioned to 
their size, eleven or twelve being stored when they are small, but only 
eight or nine when larger. With respect however to the caution of the 
wasp in selecting full-grown grubs and conveying them uninjured to her 
hole, a satisfactory explanation may be given. If those that are but 
partly grown were chosen, they would die in a short time for want of food, 
and putrefying would destroy the enclosed egg, or the young one which 
springs from it. But when larve of any kind have attained their full 
size, and are about to pass into the pupa state, they can exist for a long 
period without any further supply. By selecting these, therefore, and 
placing them uninjured in the hole, however long the interval before the 
egg hatches, the disclosed larva is sure of a sufficiency of fresh and whole- 
some nutriment.—To prevent the possibility of any injury to its egg from 
the motions or voracity of this living prey, the wasp is careful to pack the 
whole so closely, each grub being coiled above the other in a series of 
rings, and to consolidate the earth so firmly above them, that they have 
not the slightest power of motion..—Those which select more powerful 
caterpillars, or revenge the injuries of their insect brethren by devoting 
‘spiders to the destruction they have so often caused, take care to sting 
them in such a manner as, without killing them outright, will incapacitate 
them from doing any injury. 

Zeal and activity in providing for the well-being of their future progeny, 
not inferior to what are exhibited by the tribe of Ichneumons, Sphecina?, 
and mason-wasps, though less cruelly exerted, are also shown by various 
species of wild bees, of which we have in this country a great number. 
Having first excavated a proper cell with a dexterity and persevering 
labor never enough to be admired, they next deposit in it an egg, which 
they cover with a mass of pollen or honey collected with unwearied assid- 
uity from a thousand flowers. As soon as the grub is hatched, it finds itself 
enveloped in this delicious banquet provided for it by the cares of a 
mother it is doomed never to behold; and so accurately is the repast 
proportioned to its appetite and its wants, that as soon as the whole is con- 
sumed it has no longer need of food; it clothes itself in a silken cocoon, 
becomes a pupa, and after a deep sleep of a few days bursts from its cell 
an active bee. 

A considerable number of wild bees, however (those of the genera 
Nomada, Melecta, &c.) being unprovided with an apparatus for collecting 
pollen, save themselves not only this labor but also that of excavating 
cells, and gliding into those in which their more industrious brethren have 
deposited their eggs and the necessary supply of pollen moistened with 
honey for food, they also, cuckoo-like, insinuate their own eggs, (imitating 
in this respect the carnivorous parasites lately noticed,) the larve from 
which live at the cost of the rightful occupants. 


1 Reaum. vi. 252. 

2 By this term I would distinguish the tribe of Fossores of Latreille, which the French 
call Wasp-Ichneumons, and which form the Linnean genus Sphez, divisible into several 
families as Sphecide, Pompilida, Bembecida, &c. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 233 


No circumstance connected with the storge of insects is more striking 
than the herculean and incessant labor which it -leads them cheerfully to 
undergo. Some of these exertions are so disproportionate to the size of 
the insect, that nothing short of ocular conviction could attribute them to 
such anagent. A wild bee or a Sphex, for instance, will dig a hole in a 
hard bank of earth some inches deep and five or six times its own size, 
and labor unremittingly at this arduous undertaking for several da¥s, 
scarcely allowing itself a moment for eating or repose. It will then occupy 
as much time in searching for a store of food; and no sooner is this task 
finished, than it will set about repeating the process, and before it dies will 
have completed five or six similar cells or even more. If you would esti- 
mate this industry at its proper value, you should reflect what kind of 
exertion it would require in a man to dig in a few days out of hard clay or 
sand, with no other tools than his nails and teeth, five or six caverns 
twenty feet deep and four or five wide—for such an undertaking would 
not be comparatively greater than that of the insects in question. 

Similar laborious exertions are not confined to the bee or Sphex tribe. 
Several beetles in depositing their eggs exhibit examples of industry 
equally extraordinary. The common dor or clock (Geotrupes stercora- 
rius), which may be found beneath every heap of dung, digs a deep 
cylindrical hole, and carrying down a mass of the dung to the bottom, 
in it deposits its eggs. And many of the species of the Scarabeide! 
roll together wet-dung into round pellets, deposit an egg in the midst 
of each, and when dry push them backwards by their hind feet, some- 
times three or four assisting, into holes of the surprising depth of three 
feet, which they have previously dug for their reception, and which are 
often several yards distant. Frequently the road lies across a depression 
in the surface, and the pellet when nearly pushed to the summit rolls 
back again. But our patient Sisyphi are not easily discouraged. They 
repeat their efforts again and again, and in the end their perseverance is 
rewarded by success.” The attention of these insects to their egg-balls 
is so remarkable, that it was observed in the earliest ages, and is mention- 
ed by ancient writers, but with the addition of many fables, as that they 
were all of the male sex, that they became young again every year, that 


* Mr. W.S. MacLeay in his very remarkable and learned work (Hore Entomologica) 
has very properly restored its name to the true Scarabeus of the ancients, which gives its 
nanie to this group. 

® The precise mode in which these dung-pellets are formed, and the object of rolling 
them greater distances than would seem to be required for merely depositing them in their 
holes, which it might have been supposed would, like those of our common dung-beetle, 
be made close to (if not under) the dang employed, do not appear to have been very clearly 
ascertained. According to a newspaper extract given from the travels of an author, whose 
name is not given, the Scarabeide frequenting the Egyptian deserts from their egg-balls of 
a mixture of clay (sand?) and camel’s dung, and they keep rolling them the whole day, 
apparently to dry the surface, as they ceased rolling them if clouds overshadowed the sun 
in the day time, and invariably at sunset (thus confirming the ancient idea) betaking them- 
selves to their holes, and leaving their egg-balls till sunrise the next day. If this account 
be supposed to be correct only as respects clay (or sand) entering into the composition of 
the exterior crust of the egg-balls, it may perhaps throw light on the formation of the sin- 
gular shot-like balls, two inches in diameter, with a very hard shell, of which Col. Sykes 
has given an interesting account (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 130.), which produced speci- 
mens of the Indian dung-beetle, Copris Midas. In fact, the mere long rolling of a ball of 
very moist dung upon sand or powdery clay would press so much of either into the surface 
as to give it when dry a very hard shell, which would remain much as Col, Sykes describes, 
when the larva had eaten all the central portion of dung. 


20* 


234 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


they rolled the pellets containing their eggs from’ sunrise to sunset every 
day, for twenty-eight days without intermission’, &c. It is one of this 
tribe of beetles (8. sacer) whose image is so often met with amongst the 
hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, with whom it was a symbol of the world, 
of the sun, and of a courageous warrior. Of the world, as P. Valerianus 
supposes, on account of the orbicular form of its pellets of dung, and the 
notion of their being rolled from sunrise to sunset ; of the sun, because of 
the angular projections from its head resembling rays, and the thirty joints 
of the six tarsi of its feet answering to the days of the month; and of a 
warrior, from the idea of manly courage being connected with its supposed 
birth from a male only.” It was as symbolical of this last that its image 
was worn upon the signets of the Roman soldiers ; and as typical of the 
sun, the source of fertility, it is yet, as Dr. Clarke informs us, eaten by 
the women to render them prolific. 

These beetles, however, in point of industry must yield the palm to 
one (Necrophorus Vespillo), whose singular history was first detailed by 
M. Gleditsch in the Acts of the Berlin Society for 1752. He begins by 
informing us that he had often remarked that dead moles when laid upon 
the ground, especially if upon loose earth, were almost sure to disappear 
in the course of two or three days, often of twelve hours. ‘To ascertain 
the cause, he placed a mole upon one of the beds in his garden. It had 
vanished by the third morning; and on digging where it had been laid, he 
found it buried to the depth of three inches, and under it four beetles, 
which seemed to have been the agents in this singular inhumation. Not 
perceiving any thing particular in the mole, he buried it again; and on 
examining it at the end of six days he found it swarming with maggots 
apparently the issue of the beetles, which M. Gleditsch now naturally 
concluded had buried the carcass for the food of their future young. To 
determine these points more clearly, he put four of these insects into a 
glass vessel half filled with earth and properly secured, and upon the 
surface of the earth two frogs. In less than twelve hours one of the frogs 
was interred by two of the beetles: the other two ran about the whole 
day as if busied in measuring the dimensions of the remaining corpse, 
which on the third day was also found buried. He then introduced a 
dead linnet. A pair of the beetles were soon engaged upon the bird. 
They began their operations by pushing out the earth from under the 
body so as to form a cavity for its reception; and it was curious to see 
the efforts which the beetles made by dragging at the feathers of the bird 
from below to pull it into its grave. The male having driven the female 
away continued the work alone for five hours. He lifted up the bird, 
changed its place, turned it, and arranged it in the grave, and from time 
to time came out of the hole, mounted upon it and trod it under foot, and 
then retired below and pulled it down. At length, apparently wearied 
with this uninterrupted labor, it came forth and leaned its head upon the 
earth beside the bird without the smallest motion as if to rest itself, for a 
full hour, when it again crept under the earth. The next day in the 


1 Mouffet, 153. 

2 J. Pierii Valeriani Hieroglyphica, 93—95. Mouffet, 156. 

3 Travels, ii. 306. Compare M. Latreille’s learned Memoir entitled Des Insectes peints ou 
sculptes sur les Monumens antiques dz !’ Egypte. Ann. du Mus. 1819; and also the Rev. F. 
W. Hope’s Observations in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 172. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 935 
morning the bird was an inch and a half under ground, and the trench 
remained open the whole day, the corpse seeming as if laid out upon a 
bier, surrounded with a rampart of mould. In the evening it had sunk 
half an inch lower, and in another. day the work was completed and the 
bird covered.—M. Gleditsch continued to add other smal] dead animals, 
which were all sooner or later buried: and the result of his experiment 
was, that in fifty days four beetles had interred in the very small space of 
earth allotted to them, twelve carcasses ; viz. four frogs, three small birds, 
two fishes, one mole, and two grasshoppers, besides the entrails of a fish, 
and two morsels of the lungs of an ox. In another experiment a single 
beetle buried a mole forty times its own bulk and weight in two days. 
It is plain that all this labor is incurred for the sake of placing in security 
the future young of these industrious insects along with a necessary pro- 
vision of food. One mole would have sufficed a long time for the repast 
of the beetles themselves, and they could have more conveniently fed 
upon it above ground than below. But if they had left thus exposed the 
carcass in which their eggs were deposited, both would have been exposed 
to the imminent risk of being destroyed at a mouthful by the first fox or 
kite that chanced to espy them. 

At the first view I dare say you feel almost inclined to pity the little 
animals doomed to exertions apparently so disproportioned to their size. 
You are ready to exclaim that the pains of so short an existence, engrossed 
with such arduous and incessant toil, must far outweigh the pleasures. 
Yet the inference would be altogether erroneous. What strikes us as 
wearisome toil, is to the little agents delightful occupation. The kind 
Author of their being has associated the performance of an essential duty 
with feelings evidently of the most pleasurable description ; and, like the 
affectionate father whose love for his children sweetens the most painful 
labors, these little insects are never more happy than when thus actively 
engaged. ‘A bee,’ as Dr. Paley has well observed, ‘‘ amongst the flow- 
ers in spring (when it is occupied without intermission in collecting farina 
for its young or honey for its associates), is one of the cheerfullest objects 
that can be Jooked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment—so busy 
and so pleased.’” 

Of the sources of exquisite gratification which every rural walk will 
open to you, while witnessing in the animals themselves those marks of 
affection for their unseen progeny of which I have endeavored to give you 
a slight sketch, it will be none of the least fertile to examine the various 
and appropriate instruments with which insects have been furnished for 
_ the effective execution of their labors. The young of the saw-fly tribe 
(Serrifera*) are destined to feed upon the leaves of rose-trees and 
various other plants. Upon the branches of these the parent fly deposits 
her eggs in cells symmetrically arranged; and the instrument with which 
she forms them is a saw, somewhat like ours but far more ingenious and 
perfect, being toothed on each side, or rather consisting of two distinct 
saws, with their backs (the teeth or serratures of which are themselves 
often serrated, and the exterior flat sides scored and toothed), which play 

2 Natural Theology, 497. 


3 Latreille denominates this tribe Securifera ; but as the tool of these insects resembles a 
saw and not a hatchet, we have ventured to change it to Serrifera, which is more appropriate. 


236 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


alternately ; and, while their vertical effect is that of a saw, act laterally 
as arasp. When by this alternate motion the inciSion, or cell, is made, 
the two saws, receding from each other, conduct the egg between them 
into it.1 The Cicada, so celebrated by the poets of antiquity, which lays 
its eggs in dry wood, requires a stronger instrument of a different con- 
struction. Accordingly it is provided with an excellent double auger, the 
sides of which play alternately and parallel to each other, and bore a 
hole of the requisite depth in very hard substances without ever being 
displaced.? : 

The construction of the sting or ovipositor with which the different 
species of Ichneumon are provided, is not less nicely adapted to its various 
purposes. In those which lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars that 
feed exposed on the leaves of plants it is short, often in very large species 
not the eighth of an inch long: having free access to their victims, a 
longer sting would have been useless. Buta considerable number oviposit 
in larve which lie concealed where so short an instrument could not pos- 
sibly approach them. In these, therefore, the sting is proportionably 
elongated, so much so that in some small species it is three or four times 
the length of the body. Thus in Pimpla Manifestator, whose economy 
has been so pleasingly illustrated by Mr. Marsham?, and which attacks 
the larva of a wild bee (Chelostoma* mazillosa) lying at the bottom of 
deep holes in old wood, the sting is nearly two inches long: and it is not 
much shorter in the more minute I. Strobilelle L., which lays its eggs in 
larve concealed in the interior of fir cones, which without such an appa- 
ratus it would never be able to reach. 

The tail of the females of many moths whose eggs require to be 
protected from too severe a cold and too strong a light, is furnished, evi- 
dently for application to this very purpose, with a thick tuft of hair. But 
how shall the moth detach this non-conducting material and arrange it 
upon her eggs? Her ovipositor is provided at the end with an instrument 
resembling a pair of pincers, which for this purpose are as good as hands. 
With these, having previously deposited her eggs upon a leaf, she pulls off 
her tuft of hairs, with which she so closely envelops them as effectually 
to preserve them of the required temperature, and having performed this 
last duty to her progeny she expires. 

The ovipositor of the capricorn beetles, an infinite host, is a flattened 
retractile tube, of a hard substance, by means of which it can introduce 
its eggs under the bark of timber, and so place them where its progeny - 
will find their appropriate food.* The auger used by certain species of 
(Estrus, to enable them to penetrate the hides of oxen or deer and form 
anidus for their eggs, has been before described.—But to enumerate all 
the varieties of these instruments would be endless. 

The purpose which in the insects above mentioned is answered by their 
anal apparatus is fulfilled in the numerous tribes of weevils by the long 


1 Prof. Peck’s Nat. Hist. of the Slug-worm, t, 12, f. 12—14. 

* Dr. Burmeister and M Doyére consider the central piece of the borer of the Cicada as 
the really piercing organ, and the lateral files as only serving asa point of support; bat 
Mr. Westwood states that numerous dissections of these parts have convinced him of the 
correctness of Reaumur’s description, that the lateral serrated pieces are the real organs of 
perforation. (Mod. Classif. of Ins. il. 424.) 

3 Linn. Trans. iii. 23. 4 Apis.**, c. 2. y. K. 

5 See Kirby in Linn. Trans. v. 254. t. 12. f. 15. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 237 


slender snout with which their head is provided. It is with this that 
Balaninus Nucum pierces the shell of the nut, and the weevil (Calandra 
granaria) the skin of the grains of wheat, in which they respectively 
deposit their eggs, prudently introducing one only into each nut or grain, 
which is sufficient, but no more than sufficient, for the nourishment of the 
erub that will inhabit it. 

II. Hitherto I have adverted to those insects only which perish before 
their young come into existence, and can therefore evince their affection 
for them in no other way than by placing the egés whence they are to 
spring in secure situations stored with food, and these include by far the 
largest portion of the race. A very considerable number, however, extend 
their cares much further: they not only watch over their eggs after depos- 
iting them, but attend upon their young when excluded, with an affectionate 
assiduity equal to any thing exhibited amongst the larger animals, and in 
the highest degree interesting. Of this description are some solitary 
insects, as several species of the Linnean genus Sphex, earwigs, field-bugs, 
and spiders: and those insects which live in societies, namely, ants, bees, 
wasps, and termites: the most striking traits of whose history in these 
respects I shall endeavor to lay before you. 

You have seen that the greater number of the Sphecina, after depositing 
their eggs in cells stored with a supply of food, take no further care of 
them. Some, however, adopt a different procedure. One of these, 
called by Bonnet the Mason-wasp but different from Reaumur’s, not only 
incloses a living caterpillar along with its eggs in the cell, which it carefully 
closes, but at the expiration of a few days, when the young grub has 
appeared and has consumed its provision, re-opens the nest, incloses a 
second caterpillar, and again shuts the mouth: and this operation it repeats 
until the young one has attained its full growth." A similar mode, accord- 
ing to Rolander, is followed by Ammophila vulgaris, as well as by the 
yellowish wasp of Pennsylvania, described by Bartram in the Philosophical 
Transactions?, and by another related to Mellinus arvensis, observed by 
Duhamel? ; both of which, however, instead of caterpillars, supply their 
larve with a periodical provision of living flies. 

What a crowd of interesting reflections are these most singular facts 
calculated to excite! With what foresight must the parent insect be 
endowed, thus to be aware at what period her eggs will be hatched into 
grubs, and how long the provision she has laid up will suffice for their 
support! What an extent of judgment, thus, in the midst of various other 
occupations, to know the precise day when a repetition of her cares will 
be required! What an accuracy of memory, to recollect with such pre- 
cision the entrance to her cell, which the most acute eye could not dis- 
cover ; and without compass or direction unerringly to fly to it, often from 
a great distance, and after the most intricate and varied wanderings! If 
we refer the whole to instinct, and to instinct doubtless it must in the 
main if not wholly be referred, our admiration is not lessened. Instinct, 
when simple and directed to one object, is less astonishing ; but such a 
complication of instincts, applied to actions so varied and dissimilar, is 
beyond our conception. We can but wonder and adore ! 


UP aes BPC SERRE Re 
1 Bonnet, ix. 398. _ ® lili. 37. Pelopa@us spirifex 2 3 Reaum. vi. 269. 


238 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


The female of Perga Lewisii (Westwood), one of the Tenthredinide, 
or Saw-flies, was observed by Mr. Lewis at Hobafton, Van Diemen’s 
Land, to sit upon the leaf into which she has inserted her eggs, about 
eighty in number, till they are hatched. This takes place in a few days, 
and afterwards she carefully feeds them in the larva state, in which the 
brood keeps together, whether eating or sleeping in an oval mass, sitting 
upon them with outstretched wings, shading them from the heat of the sun, 
and protecting them with admirable perseverance from the attacks of 
parasites and other enemies, for a period of from four to six weeks until 
her death.! 

According to M. Schmidberger, the female of a small woodboring beetle 
(Trypodendran dispar Steph.) bores in young healthy apple trees passages 
of about an inch and a half in length, penetrating near to the centre, and 
deposits at the end of them in a sort of chamber from seven to ten eggs, 
the larve from which when excluded arrange themselves in the passages 
one after another, and there feed on a white powdery substance, which he 
calls ambrosia, and supposes to be prepared by the female from the sap. 
This female, he says, never quits the passages and chambers in which her 
larve reside, but remains with them two months or more, till they are 
become perfect beetles, and he conceives is occupied partly in laying 
other eggs, but partly also in preparing “ ambrosia” for them and defend- 
ing them from their enemies.? These procedures are certainly very dif- 
ferent from those we should expect in an insect in this tribe, yet as the 
factsare stated so fully and circumstantially by a close observer, they 
deserve farther investigation from entomologists who have an opportunity 
of studying the economy of this species. 

We are indebted to De Geer for the history of a field-bug (Acanthosoma 
grisea), a species found in this country, which shows marks of affection for 
her young, such as I trust will lead you, notwithstanding any repugnant 
association that the name may call up, to search upon the birch tree, which 
it inhabits, for so interesting an insect. The family of this field-bug 
consists of thirty or forty young ones, which she conducts as a hen does 
her chickens. She never leaves them; and as soon as she begins to 
move, all the little ones closely follow, and whenever she stops assemble 
in acluster round her. De Geer having had occasion to cut a branch of 
birch peopled with one of those families, the mother showed every symp- 
tom of excessive uneasiness. In other circumstances such an alarm 
would have caused her immediate flight; but now she never stirred from 
her young but kept beating her wings incessantly with a very rapid motion, 
evidently for the purpose of protecting them from the apprehended 
danger.5—As far as our knowledge of the economy of this tribe of insects 
extends, there is no other species that manifests a similar attachment to its 
progeny ; but such may probably be discovered by future observers, 

It is De Geer also that we have to thank for a series of interesting 


1 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 233. For a figure of Perga Lewisii, see Mr. Westwood’s 
valuable and beautifal “‘ Arcana Entomologica,” No. 2. plate 7. fig. L. 

* Kdllar’s Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c, 251—262. There seems to be a considerable resem- 
blance between the “ambrosia’’ above mentioned and the globules of a kind of “ mucor,’’ 
found by Smeathman and Kénig in the nurseries of the African and East Indian Termites, 
and still more the “ gelatinous particles not unlike gum arabic,” which Latreille observed 
in the galleries of Termes lucifugus in the trunks of pines and oaks. (See Lerrer XVII. 
On Perfect Societies of Insects— White Ants.) 3 De Geer, iii. 262. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR- YOUNG. . 239 


observations on the maternal affection exhibited by the common earwig. 
This curious insect, so unjustly traduced by a vulgar prejudice,—as if the 
Creator had willed that the insect world should combine within itself 
examples of all that is most remarkable in every other department of nature, 
—=still more nearly approaches the habits of the hen in her care of her family. 
She absolutely sits upon her eggs as if to hatch them—a fact which 
Frisch appears first to have noticed—and guards them with the greatest 
eare. De Geer, having found an earwig thus occupied, removed her into 
a box where was some earth, and scattered the eggs in all directions. She 
soon, however, collected them one by one with her jaws into a heap, and 
assiduously sat upon them as before. ‘The young ones, which resemble 
the parent except in wanting elytra and wings, and, strange to say, are 
as soon as born larger than the eggs which contained them, immediately 
upon being hatched creep like a brood of chickens under the belly of the 
mother, who very quietly suffers them to push between her feet, and will 
often, as De Geer found, sit over them in this posture for some hours.? 
This remarkable fact I have myself witnessed, having found an earwig 
under a stone which I accidentally turned over, sitting upon a cluster of 
young ones, just as this celebrated naturalist has described. 

We are so accustomed to associate the ideas of cruelty and ferocity 
with the name of spider, that to attribute parental affection to any of the 
tribe seems at first view almost preposterous. Who, indeed, could suspect 
that animals which greedily devour their own species whenever they have 
opportunity, should be susceptible of the finer feelings? Yet such is the 
fact. There is‘a spider common under clods of earth (Lycosa saccata) 
which may at once be distinguished by a white globular silken bag about 
the size of a pea, in which she has deposited her eggs, attached to the 
extremity of her body. Never miser clung to his treasure with more 
tenacious solicitude than this spider to her bag. ‘Though apparently a 
considerable incumbrance, she carries it with her every where. If you 
deprive her of it, she makes the most strenuous efforts for its recovery ; 
and no personal danger can force her to quit the precious load. Are her 
efforts ineffectual? A stupefying melancholy seems to seize her, and, 
when deprived of this first object of her cares, existence itself appears to 
have lost its charms. If she succeeds in regaining her bag, or you restore 
it to her, her actions demonstrate the excess of her joy. She eagerly 
seizes it, and with the utmost agility runs off with it to a place of security. 
Bonnet put this wonderful attachment to an affecting and decisive test. 
He threw a spider with her bag into the cavern of a large ant-lion, a 
ferocious insect, which conceals itself at the bottom of a conical hole 
constructed in the sand for the purpose of catching any unfortunate victim 
that may chance to fall in. The spider endeavored to run away, but was 
not sufficiently active to prevent the ant-lion from seizing her bag of eggs, 
which it attempted to pull under the sand. She made the most violent 
efforts to defeat the aim of her invisible foe, and on her part struggled 
with all her might. The gluten, however, which fastened her bag, at 
length gave way, and it separated: but the spider instantly regained it 
with her jaws, and redoubled her efforts to rescue the prize from her oppo- 
nent. It was in vain: the ant-lion was the stronger of the two, and in 


1 De Geer, iii. 548. 


‘ 
240 _ AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


spite of all her struggles dragged the object of contestation under the 
sand. The unfortunate mother might have preserved her own life from 
the enemy: she had but to relinquish the bag, and escape out of the pit. 
But, wonderful example of maternal affection! she preferred allowing 
herself to be buried alive along with the treasure dearer to her than her 
existence; and it was only by force that Bonnet at length withdrew her 
from the unequal conflict. But the bag of eggs remained with the assassin : 
and though he pushed her repeatedly with a twig of wood, she still per- 
sisted in continuing on the spot. Life seemed to have become a burden 
to her, and all her pleasures to have been’ buried in the grave which 
contained the germ of her progeny !! The attachment of this affectionate 
mother is not confined to her eggs. After the young spiders are hatched, 
they make their way out of the bag by an orifice, which she is careful to 
open for them, and without which they could never escape?; and then, 
like the young of the Surinam toad (Rana pipa), they attach themselves 
in clusters upon her back, belly, head, and even legs; and in this situation, 
where they present a very singular appearance, she carries them about 
with her and feeds them until their first moult, when they are big enough 
to provide their own subsistence. I have more than once been gratified 
by a sight of the former part of this interesting spectacle ; and when I 
nearly touched the mother, thus covered by hundreds of her progeny, it 
was most amusing to see them all leap from her back and run away in 
every direction.® 

A similar attachment to their eggs and young is manifested by many 
other species of the same tribe, particularly of the genera Lycosa and 
Dolomedes. Clubiona holosericea was found by De Geer in her nest 
with fifty or sixty young ones, when manifesting nothing of her usual 
timidity, so obstinately did she persist in remaining with them, that to 
drive her away it was necessary to cut her whole nest in pieces.* 


I must now conduct you to a hasty survey-of those insects which live 
together in societies, and fabricate dwellings for the community, such as 
ants, wasps, bees, humble-bees, and termites, whose great object (sometimes 
combined, indeed, with the storing up of a stock of winter provisions for 
themselves) is the nutrition and education of their young. Of the pro- 
ceedings of many of these insects we know comparatively nothing. 
There are, it is likely, some hundreds of distinct species of bees which 
live in societies, and form nests of a different and peculiar construction. 
The constitution of these societies is probably as varicus as the exterior 
forms of their nests, and their habits possibly curious in the highest degree ; 
yet our knowledge is almost confined to the economy of the hive-bee and 


1 Bonnet, ii. 435, 2 De Geer, vii. 194. 

3 Dr. Heineken, whose zeal for Entomology as manifested hy his valuable communica- 
tions in spite of ill health to the Zoological Journal shows how great a loss the science sus- 
tained by his untimely death, states that having placed a large female Lycosa covered with 
her young, just hatched, in a cage so constructed that they could quit it while she could not, 
he fed her with flies for fifteen days, but never observed her to feed her young ones, nor 
them to quit their station on her body, nor to seem at all interested or excited when she 
was engaged in eating. At length, fifteen days after their birth, they quitted the mother 
and escaped from the cage. Dr. Heineken, however, admits that observations of this kind 
made on insects in confinement are by no means conclusive. (Zool. Journ. v. 192.) 

4 De Geer, vii. 268. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 241 


of some species of humble-bees. The same may be said of wasps, ants, 
and termites, of which, though there is a vast. variety of different kinds, 
we are acquainted with the history of but a very few. You will not 
therefore expect more than a sketch of the most interesting traits of affec- 
tion for their young manifested by the common species of each genus. 

One circumstance must be premised with regard to the education of 
the young of most of those insects which live in society, truly extraor- 
dinary, and without parallel in any other department of nature; namely, 
that this office, except under particular circumstances, is not undertaken 
by the female which has given birth to them, but by the workers, or 
neuters, as they are sometimes called, which, though bound to the offspring 
of the common mother of the society by no other than fraternal ties, 
exhibit towards them all the marks of the most ardent parental affection, 
building habitations for their use, feeding them, and tending them with 
incessant solicitude, and willingly sacrificing their lives in defence of the 
precious charge. Thus sterility itself is made an instrument of the pres- 
ervation and multiplication of species ; and females too fruitful to educate 
all their young are indulged by Providence with a privilege without which 
nine tenths of their progeny must perish. 

The most determined despiser of insects and their concerns—he who 
never deigned to open his eyes to any other part of their economy—must 
yet have observed, even in spite of himself, the remarkable attachment 
which the inhabitants of a disturbed nest of ants manifest towards certain 
small white oblong bodies with which it is usually stored. He must have 
perceived that the ants are much less intently occupied with providing for 
their own safety, than in carrying off these little bodies to a place of secu- 
rity. To effect this purpose the whole community is in motion, and no 
danger can divert them from attempting its accomplishment. An observer 
having cut an ant in two, the poor mutilated animal did not relax in its 
affectionate exertions. With that half of the body to which the head 
remained attached it contrived previously to expiring to carry off ten of 
these white masses into the interior of the nest! You will readily divine 
that these attractive objects are the young of the ants in one of the first or 
imperfect+states. They are, in fact, not the eggs, as they are vulgarly 
ealled, but the pupz, which the working ants tend with the most patient 
assiduity. But I must give you a more detailed account of their operations, 
beginning with the actual eggs. 

These, which are so small as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye, as 
soon as deposited by the queen ant, who drops them at random in her 
progress through the nest, are taken charge of by the workers, who imme- 
diately seize them and carry them in their mouths, in small parcels, inces- 
santly turning them backwards and forwards with their tongue for the pur- 
pose of moistening them, without which they would come to nothing. They 
then lay them in heaps, which they place in separate apartments', and 
constantly tend until hatched into larve; frequently in the course of the 
day removing them from one quarter of the nest to another, as they require 
a warmer or cooler, a moister or drier atmosphere ; and at intervals brooding 
over them as if to impart a genial warmth.? Experiments have been made 
to ascertain whether these assiduous nurses could distinguish their eggs if 


1 Huber, 69. 2 De Geer, ii. 1099. 
21 


242 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


intermixed with particles of salt and sugar, which, to an ordinary observer, 
they very much resemble ; but the result was constantly in favor of the 
sagacity of the ants. They invariably selected the eggs from whatever 
materials they were mixed with, and re-arranged them as before.’ 

New and more severe labors succeed the birth of the young grubs which 
are disclosed from the eggs after a few days. ‘The working ants are now 
almost without remission engaged in supplying their wants and forwarding 
their growth. Every evening an hour before sunset they regularly remove 
the whole brood, as well as the eggs and pupz, which in an old nest all 
require attention at the same time, to cells situated lower down in the earth, 
where they will be safe from the cold; and in the morning they as con- 
stantly remove them again towards the surface of the nest. If, however, 
there is a prospect of cold or wet weather, the provident ants forbear on 
that day transporting their young from the inner cells, aware that their 
tender frames are unable to withstand an inclement sky. What is particu- 
larly worthy of notice in this herculean task, the ants constantly regulate 
their proceedings by the sun, removing their young according to the earlier or 
later rising and setting of that luminary. As soon as his first rays begin to shine 
on the exterior of the nest, the ants that are at the top go below in great 
haste to rouse their companions, whom they strike with their antenne, or, 
when they do not seem to comprehend them, drag with their jaws to the 
summit till a swarm of busy laborers fill every passage. ‘These take up 
the larve and pup, which they hastily transport to the upper part of their 
habitation, where they leave them a quarter of an hour, and then carry 
them into apartments where they are sheltered from the sun’s direct rays.? 

Severe as this constant and unremitted daily labor seems, it is but a small 
part of what the affection of the working ants leads them readily to 
undertake. The feeding of the young brood, which rests solely upon 
them, is a more serious charge. ‘The nest is constantly stored with larve 
the year round, during all which time, except in winter when the whole 
society is torpid, they require feeding several times a day with a viscid 
half digested fluid that the workers disgorge into their mouths, which when 
hungry they stretch out to meet those of their nurses. Add to which, 
that in an old nest there are generally two distinct broods of different ages 
requiring separate attention; and that the observations of Huber make it 
probable that at one period they require a more substantial food than at 
another. It is true that the youngest brood at first want but little nutri- 
ment; but still, when we consider that they must not be neglected, that 
the older brood demand incessant supplies, and in a well stocked nest 
amount to 7000 or 8000, and that the task of satisfying all these cravings, 
as well as providing for their own subsistence, falls to the lot of the work- 
ing ants, we are almost ready to regard the burden as greater than can be 
borne by such minute agents; and we shall not wonder at the incessant 
activity with which we see them foraging on every side. 

Their labor does not end here. It is necessary that the larve should be 
kept extremely clean; and for this purpose the ants are perpetually passing 
their tongue and mandibles over their body, rendering them by this means 
perfectly white.? After the young grubs have attained their full growth, 
they surround themselves with a silken cocoon and become pupe, which, 


1 Gould, 37. 2 Huber, 74. ~ 8 Huber, 78. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 243 


food excepted, require as much attention as in the larva state. Every 
morning they are transported from the bottom of the nest to the surface, 
and every evening returned to their former quarters. And if, as is often 
the case, the nest be thrown into ruins by the unlucky foot of a passing 
animal, in addition to all these daily and hourly avocations is superadded 
the immediate necessity of collecting the pupe from the earth with which 
they have been mixed, and of restoring the nest to its pristine state.’ 

Nothing can be more curious than the view of the interior of a fully 
peopled ants’ nest insummer. In one part are stored the eggs; in another 
the pupe are heaped up by hundreds in spacious 4partments; and in a 
third we see the larve surrounded by the workers, some of which feed 
them, while others keep guard, standing erect upon their hind legs with 
their abdomen elevated in the position for ejaculating their acid, than 
which, gunpowder would not be more formidable to the majority of their 
foes. Some again are occupied in cleaning the alleys from obstructions of 
various kinds; and others rest in perfect repose, recruiting their strength 
for new labors. 

Contrary to what is observed amongst other insects, even the extrication 
of the young ants from the silken cocoon which encloses them is imposed 
upon the workers, who are taught by some sensation to us incomprehensi- 
ble, that the perfect insect is now ready to burst from the shroud, but too 
weak to effect its purpose unaided. When the workers discover that this 
period has arrived, a great bustle prevails in their apartment. Three or 
four mount upon one cocoon, and with their mandibles begin to open it 
where the head lies. First they pull off a few threads to render the place 
thinner ; they then make several small openings, and with great patience 
cut the threads which separate them one by one, till an orifice is formed 
sufficiently large for extracting the prisoner; which operation they perform 
with the utmost gentleness. The ant is still enveloped in its pellicle ; this 
the workers also pull off, carefully disengaging every member from its case, 
and nicely expanding the wings of such as are furnished with them. After 
thus liberating and afterwards feeding the new-born insects, they still for 
several days watch and follow them every where, teaching them to unravel 
the paths and winding labyrinths of the common habitation?; and when 
the males and females at length take flight, these affectionate stepmothers 
accompany them, mounting with them to the summit of the highest herbs, 
showing the most tender solicitude for them (some even endeavor to retain 
them), feeding them for the last time, caressing them; and at length, when 
they rise into the air and disappear, seeming to linger for some seconds 
over the footsteps of these favored beings, of whom they have taken such 
exemplary care, and whom they will never behold again.® 

In the above account, exclusive of the bare fact of their laying the 
eggs, no mention is made of the female ants, the real parents of the 
republic. You are not from this to suppose that they never feel the 


1 The Russian shepherds ingeniously avail themselves of the attachment of ants to their 
young, for obtaining with little trouble a collection of the pupz, which they sell as a dain- 
ty food for nightingales. They scatter an ants’ nest upon a dry plot of ground, surrounded 
with a shallow trench of water, and place on one side of it a few fir branches. Under 
these the ants, having no other alternative, carefully arrange all their pupez, and in an 
hour or two the shepherd finds a large heap clean and ready for market. Anderson’s Re- 
éreations in Agriculture, &c. iv. 158. 

2 Huber, 83. 3 Tbid. 93. 


244 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 

influence of this divine principle of love for thgir offspring. When, 
indeed, a colony is established and peopled, they _ enough to do to 
furnish it with eggs to produce its necessary supply of future females, 
males, and workers, which, according to Gould, are laid at three different 
seasons.! This is the ordinary duty assigned to them by Providence. 
Yet, at the first formation of a nest, the female acts the kind part, and 
performs all the maternal offices which I have just described as peculiar 
to the workers ; and it is only when these become sufficiently numerous 
to relieve her, that she resigns this charge and devotes herself exclusively 
to oviposition.” 

There is one circumstance occurring at this period of their history which 
affords a very affecting example of the self-denial and self-devotion of 
these admirable creatures. If you have paid any attention to what is 
going forward in an ant-hill, you will have observed some larger than the 
rest, which at first sight appear, as well as the workers, to have no wings, 
but which upon a closer examination exhibit a small portion of their base, 
or the sockets in which they were inserted. These are females that have 
cast their wings, not accidentally but by a voluntary act. When an ant 
of this sex first emerges from the pupa, she is adorned with two pair of 
wings, the upper or outer pair being larger than her body. With these, 
when a virgin, she is enabled to traverse the fields of ether, surrounded 
by myriads of the other sex, who are candidates for her favor. But when 
once connubial rites are celebrated, the unhappy husband dies, and the 
widowed bride seeks only how she may provide for their mutual offspring. 
Panting no more to join the choir of aérial dancers, her only thought is 
to construct a subterranean abode in which she may deposit and attend 
to her eggs, and cherish her embryo young, till, having passed through 
their various changes, they arrive at their perfect state, and she can 
devolve upon them a portion of her maternal cares. Her ample wings, 
which before were her chief ornament and the instruments of her pleasure, 
are now an incumbrance which incommode her in the fulfillment of the 
great duty uppermost in her mind; she, therefore, without a moment’s 
hesitation, plucks them from her shoulders. Might we not then address 
females who have families in words like those of Solomon, “‘ Go to the 
ant, ye mothers ; consider her ways and be wise ?” 

M. P. Huber was more than once witness to this proceeding. He saw 
one female stretch her wings with a strong effort so as to bring them 
before her head—she then crossed them in all directions—next she 
reversed them alternately on each side—at last, in consequence of some 
violent contortions, the four wings fell at the same moment in his pre- 
sence. Another, in addition to these motions, used her legs to assist im 
the work.® 

Thus, from the very moment of the extrusion of the egg to the matu- 
rity of the perfect insect, are the ants unremittingly occupied in the care 
of the young of the society, and that with an ardor of affectionate attach- 


L a ne eres a 


1p: 35. * Huber, 110. 

3 Huber, 109.—Gould had, long before Huber, observed that female ants cast their 
wings, pp. 59, 62. 64. I have frequently observed them, sometimes with only one wing, 
at others with only fragments of the wings; and again, at others they were so completely 
pulled off, that it could not be known that they formerly had them, only by the sockets in 
which they were inserted. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 245 


ment to which, when its intensity and duration are taken into the account, 
we may fairly say there is nothing parallel in the whole animal world." 
Amongst birds and quadrupeds we have instances of affection as strong 
perhaps while it lasts, but how much shorter the period during which it is 
exerted! In a month or two the young of the former require no further 
attention ; and if in a state of nature some of the latter give suck to their 
offspring for a longer period, it is on their parts without effort or labor ; 
and in both cases the time given up to their young forms a very small 
part of the life of the animal. But the little insects in question not only 
spend a greater portion of time in the education of their progeny, but 
devote even the whole of their existence, from their birth to their death, 
to this one occupation ! 

The common hive-bee and the wasp in their attention to their young 
exhibit the same general features. Both build for their reception hexa- 
gonal cells, differing in size according to the future sex of the included 
grubs, which as soon as hatched they both feed and assiduously tend until 
their transformation into pupe. There are peculiarities, however, in their 
modes of procedure, which require a distinct notice. 

The economy of a nest of wasps differs from that of bees, in that the 
eggs are laid not by a single mother or queen, but by several; and that 
these mothers take the same care as the workers in feeding the young 
grubs: indeed those first hatched are fed entirely by the female which 
produced them, the solitary founder of the colony. The sole survivor 
probably of a last year’s swarm of many thousands, this female, as soon 
as revived by the warmth of spring, proceeds to construct a few cells, 
and deposits in them the eggs of working wasps. ‘The eggs are covered 
with a gluten, which fixes them so strongly against the sides of the cells, 
that it is not easy to separate them unbroken. These eggs seem to require 
care from the time they are laid, for the wasps many times in a day put 
their heads into the cells which contain them. When they are hatched, 
it is amusing to witness the activity with which the female runs from cell 
to cell, putting ker head into those in which the grubs are very young, 
while those that are more advanced in age thrust their heads out of their 
cells, and by little movements seem to be asking for their food. As soon 
as they receive their portion, they draw them back and remain quite. 
These she feeds until they become pupz ; and within twelve hours after 
being excluded in their perfect state, they eagerly set to work in construct- 
ing fresh cells, and in lightening the burden of their parent by assisting 
her in feeding the grubs of other workers and females which are by this 
time born. In a few weeks the society will have received an accession 
of several hundred workers and many females, which without distinction 
apply themselves to provide food for the growing grubs, now become 
exceedingly numerous. With this object in view, as they collect little or 
no honey from flowers, they are constantly engaged in predatory expedi- 
tions. One party will attack a hive of bees, a grocer’s sugar hogshead, 
or other saccharine repository ; or, if these fail, the juice of a ripe peach 
or pear. You will be less indignant than formerly at these audacious 
robbers now you know that self is little considered in their attacks, and 
that your ravaged fruit has supplied an exquisite banquet to the most 


‘ Huber, 93. 
21* 


246 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG, 


tender grubs of the nest, into whose extended mouths the successful 
marauders, running with astonishing agility from one cell to another, dis- 
gorge successively a small portion of their booty in the same way that a 
bird supplies her young.’ Another party is charged with providing more 
substantial aliment for the grubs of maturer growth. ‘These wage war 
upon bees, flies, and even the meat of a butcher’s stall, and joyfully return 
to the nest laden with the well-filled bodies of the former, or pieces of 
the latter as large as they can carry. ‘This solid food they distribute in 
like manner to the larger grubs, which may be seen eagerly protruding - 
their heads out of the cells to receive the welcome meal. As wasps lay 
up no store of food?, these exertions are the task of every day during the 
summer, fresh broods of grubs constantly succeeding to those which have 
become pupz or perfect insects; and in autumn, when the colony is 
augmented to 20,000 or 30,000, and the grubs in proportion, the scene of 
bustle which it presents may be readily conceived. 

Though such is the love of wasps for their young, that if their nest be 
broken almost entirely in pieces they will not abandon it’, yet when the 
cold weather approaches, a melancholy change ensues, followed by a cruel 
catastrophe, which at first you will be apt to regard as ill comporting with 
this affectionate character. As soon as the first sharp frost of October 
has been felt, the exterior of a wasp’s nest becomes a perfect scene of 
horror. The old wasps drag out of the cells all the grubs and unrelent- 
ingly destroy them, strewing their dead carcasses around the door of their 
now desolate habitation. ‘What monsters of cruelty!” I hear you 
exclaim, “ what detestable barbarians!” But be not too hasty. When you 
have coolly considered the circumstances of the case, you will view this 
seemingly cruel sacrifice in a different light. The old wasps have no 
stock of provisions: the benumbing hand of Winter is about to incapaci- 
tate them from exertion ; while the season itself affords no supply. What 
resource then is left? Their young must linger on a short period, suffering 
all the agonies of hunger, and at length expire. They have it in their 
power at least to shorten the term of this misery—to cut off its bitterest 
moments. A sudden death by their own hands is comparatively a merci- 
ful stroke. This is the only alternative ; and thus, in fact, this apparent 
ferocity is the last effort of tender affection, active even to the end of life. 
I do not mean to say that this train of reasoning actually passes through 
the mind of the wasps. It is more correct to regard it as having actuated 
the benevolent Author of the instinct so singularly, and without doubt so 
wisely, excited. Were a nest of wasps to survive the winter, they would 
increase so rapidly, that not only would all the bees, flies, and other 
animals on which they prey, be extirpated, but man himself find them a 
grievous pest. It is necessary, therefore, that the great mass should annu- 


1 See Willughbyin Rai. Hist. Ins. 251. and Reaum. 

2 There are however exceptions to this rule, as in the nests of some species of Polistes, 
which fix them to trees, &c., are found about a dozen cells filled with honey at the time 
these nests contain cells destined to receive the larve of females and of males, which ren= 
ders the opinion of M. Lepelietier de Saint-Fargeau probable, that this honey is destined in 
part to nourish the former and to exercise some influence on the development of their genital 
organs. Polistes Lecheguand, found in Paraguay and Monte Video, also stores up honey as 
before mentioned (Lacordaire, Introd. & I Entom. ii. 511.), as does Myrapetra scutellaris, 
White. (Ann. Nat. Hist. vii. 320.) 

3 Reaum. vi. 174. 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. QAT 


ally perish ; but that they may suffer as little as possible, the Creator, 
mindful of the happiness of the smallest of his creatures, has endowed a 
part of the society, at the destined time, with the wonderful instinct which, 
previously to their own death, makes them the executioners of the rest. 

Wasps in the construction of their nests have solely in view the accom- 
modation of their young ones; and to these their cells are exclusively 
devoted. Bees, on the contrary (I am speaking of the common hive-bee), 
appropriate a considerable number of their cells to the reception of honey 
intended for the use of the society. Yet the education of the young 
brood is their chief object, and to this they constantly sacrifice all personal 
and selfish considerations. In a new swarm the first care is to build a 
series of cells to serve as cradles; and little or no honey is collected until 
an ample store of bee-bread, as it is called, has been laid up for their food. 
This bee-bread is composed of the pollen of flowers, which the workers 
are incessantly employed in gathering, flying from flower to flower, brushing 
from the stamens their yellow treasure, and collecting it in the little baskets 
with which their hind legs are so admirably provided; then hastening to 
the hive, and having deposited their booty, returning for a new load. The 
provision thus furnished by one set of laborers is carefully stored up by 
another, until the eggs which the queen-bee has laid, and which, adhering by 
a glutinous covering, she places nearly upright in the bottom of the cell, 
are hatched. With this bee-bread, after it has undergone a conversion 
into a sort of whitish jelly by being received into the bee’s stomach, where 
it is probably mixed with honey? and regurgitated, the young brood imme- 
diately upon their exclusion, and until their change into nymphs, are dili- 
gently fed by other bees, which anxiously att@:d upon them and several 
times a day afford a fresh supply. Different bees are seen successively to 
introduce their heads into the cells containing them, and after remaining 
in that position some moments, during which they replace the expanded 
provision, pass on to those in the neighborhood. Others often immediately 
succeed, and in like manner put in their heads as if to see that the young 
ones have every thing necessary ; which being ascertained by a glance, 
they immediately proceed, and stop only when they find a cell almost 
exhausted of food. ‘That the office of these purveyors is no very simple 
affair will be admitted, when it is understood that the food of all the grubs 
is not the same, but that it varies according to their age, being insipid 
when they are young, and, when they have nearly attained maturity, 
more sugary and somewhat acid. The larve destined for queen-bees, too, 
require a food altogether different from that appropriated to those of drones 
and workers. It may be recognized by its sharp and pungent taste. 

So accurately is the supply of food proportioned to the wants of the 
larvee, that when they have attained their full growth and are ready to 
become nymphs, not an atom is left unconsumed. At this period, intui- 
tively known ‘to their assiduous foster-parents, they terminate their cares 
by sealing up each cell with a lid of wax, convex in those containing the 
larve of drones, and nearly flat in those containing the larve of workers, 
beneath which the enclosed tenants spin in security their cocoon. In all 


2 It is not unlikely that it may undergo some other alteration in the bee’s stomach, 
which may possibly secrete some peculiar substance, as John Hunter discovered that the 
crop of the pigeon does. 


248 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG, 


these labors neither the queen nor the drones take the slightest share. 
They fall exclusively upon the workers, who, constantly called upon to 
tend fresh broods, as those brought to maturity are disposed of, devote 
nearly the whole of their existence to these maternal offices. 

Humble-bees', which im respect of their general policy must, when 
compared with bees and wasps, be regarded as rude and untutored villa- 
gers, exhibit, nevertheless, marks of affection to their young quite as 
strong as their more polished neighbors. ‘The females, like those of wasps, 
take a considerable share in their education. When one of them has with 
great labor constructed a commodious waxen cell, she next furnishes it 
with a store of pollen moistened with honey ; and then, having deposited 
six or seven eggs, carefully closes the orifice and minutest interstices with 
wax. But this is not the whole of her task. By a strange instinct, which, 
however, may be necessary to keep the population within due bounds, 
the workers, while she is occupied in laying her eggs, endeavor to seize 
them from her, and, if they succeed, greedily devour them. ‘To prevent 
this violence, her utmost activity is scarcely adequate ; and it is only. after 
she has again and again beat off the murderous intruders and pursued 
them to the furthest verge of the nest, that she succeeds in her operation. 
When finished, she is still under the necessity of closely guarding the 
cell, which the gluttonous workers would otherwise tear open, and devour 
the eggs. This duty she performs for six or eight hours with the vigilance 
of an Argus, at the end of which time they lose their taste for this food, 
and will not touch it even when presented to them. Here the labors of 
the mother cease, and are succeeded by those of the workers. These 
know the precise hour when the grubs have consumed their stock of food, 
and from that time to their maturity regularly feed them with either honey 
or pollen, introduced in their proboscis through a small hole in the cover 
of the cell opened for the occasion and then carefully closed. 

They are equally assiduous in another operation. As the grubs increase 
in size, the cell which contained them becomes too small, and in their 
exertions to be more at ease they split its thin sides. ‘To fill up these 
breaches as fast as they occur with a patch of wax is the office of the 
workers, who are constantly on the watch to discover when their services 
are wanted ; and thus the cells daily increase in size, in a way which to 
an observer ignorant of the process seems very extraordinary. 

The last duty of these affectionate foster-parents is to assist the young 
bees in cutting open the cocoons which have enclosed them in the state of 
pupe. A previous labor however must not be omitted. ‘The workers 
adopt similar measures with the hive-bee for maintaining the young pupe 
concealed in these cocoons in a genial temperature. In cold weather and 
at night they get upon them and impart the necessary warmth by brooding 
over them in clusters. Connected with this part of their domestic econ- 


1 Dr. Johnson was ignorant of the etymology of this word. It is clearly derived from 
the German Hummel or Hummel Biene,a name probably given it from its sound, Our 
English name would be more significant were it altered to Humming-bee or Booming-bee. 

2 A new and very remarkable fact observed by Mr. Newport, and communicated in his 
valuable paper on the temperature of insects, is that in the process of incubation above 
referred to, especially that adopted ten or twelve hours before the nymph makes its appear- 
ance as a perfect humble-bee, the required augmentation of heat is produced by the nurse 
or brooding-bees voluntarily increasing the number of their respirations, which at first are 
very gradual, but become more and more frequent until they reach sometimes 120 or 130 


AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 249 


omy, M. P. Huber, a worthy scion of a celebrated stock, and an inheritor 
of the science and merits of the great Huber as well as of his name, in 
his excellent paper on these insects in the sixth volume of the Linnean 
Transactions, from which most of these faets are drawn, relates a singu- 
larly curious anecdote. 

In the course of his ingenious and numerous experiments, M. Huber 
put under a bell-glass about a dozen humble-bees without any store of 
wax, along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons so unequal in height 
that it was impossible the mass should stand firmly. Its unsteadiness dis- 
quieted the humble-bees extremely. Their affection for their young led 
them to mount upon the cocoons for the sake of imparting warmth to the 
enclosed little ones, but in attempting this the comb tottered so violently 
that the scheme was almost impracticable. 'To remedy this inconvenience, 
and to make the comb steady, they- had recourse to a most ingenious 
expedient. Two or three bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves 
over its edge, and with their heads downwards fixed their fore feet on the 
table upon which it stood, whilst with their hind feet they kept it from 
falling. In this constrained and painful 'posture, fresh bees relieving their 
comrades when weary, did these affectionate little insects support the 
comb for nearly three days. At the end of this period they had prepared 
a sufficiency of wax with which they built pillars that kept it in a firm 
position: but by some accident afterwards these got displaced, when they 
had again recourse to their former manceuvre for supplying their place ; 
and this operation they perseveringly continued until M. Huber, pitying 
their hard case, relieved them by fixing the object of their attention firmly 
on the table.! 

It is impossible not to be struck with the reflection that this most 
singular fact is inexplicable on the supposition that insects are impelled to 
their operations by a blind instinct alone. How could mere machines 
have thus provided for a case which in a state of nature has probably 
never occurred to ten nests of humble-bees since the creation? If in this 
instance these little animals were not guided by a process of reasoning, 
what is the distinction between reason and instinct? How could the 
most profound architect have better adapted the means to the end—how 
more dexterously shored up a tottering edifice, until his beams and his 
props were in readiness ? 

With respect to the operations of the termites or white ants in rearing 
their young I have not much to observe. All that is known is, that they 
build commodious cells for their reception, into which the eggs of the 
queen are conveyed by the workers as soon as laid, and where when 
hatched they are assiduously fed by them until they are able to provide for 
themselves. 

In concluding this subject, it may not be superfluous to advert to an 


per minute; and Mr. Newport has seen a bee on the combs continue perseveringly to res- 
pire at this rate for eight or ten hours till its temperature was greatly increased and its body 
bathed in perspiration, when she would generally discontinue her office for a time and an 
individual occasionally take her place. From an observation made at noon, July 13., he 
found that while the thermometer stood at 70°-2 in the external air, and at 80°-2 on the 
tops of the cells of the hive not brooded on, it stood at 92°-5 when placed in contact with 
the bodies of the incubating nurse-bees, which thus by their voluntary rapid respiration 
imparted an additional heat of 12°-3 to the enclosed nymph. (Phil. Trans. 1837, p. 296.) 
2 Linn, Trans. vi. 247, &c. 


250 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 


objection which is sometimes thrown out against regarding with any par- 
ticular sympathy the affection of the lower animals to their young, on the 
ground that this feeling is in them the result of corporeal sensation only, 
and wholly different from that love which human parents feel for their 
offspring. It is true that the latter involves moral considerations which 
cannot have place in the brute creation ; but it would puzzle such objectors 
to explain in what respect the affection which a mother feels for her new- 
born infant the moment it has seen the light differs from that of an insect 
for its progeny. ‘The affection of both is purely physical, and in each 
case springs from sensations interwoven by the Creator in the constitution 
of his creatures. If the parental love of the former is worthy of our 
tenderest sympathies, that of the latter cannot be undeserving of some 


portion of similar feeling. 
Iam, &c. 


251 


LETTER XIl. i" 
ON THE FOOD OF INSECTS. 


Insects, like other animals, draw their food from the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms ; but a very slight survey will suffice to show that they 
enjoy a range over far more extensive territories. 

To begin with the vegetable kingdom.—Of this vast field the larger 
animals are confined to a comparatively small portion. Of the thousands 
of plants which clothe the face of the earth, when we have separated the 
grasses and a trifling number of herbs and shrubs, the rest are disgusting 
to them, if not absolute poisons. But how infinitely more plenteous is the 
feast to which Flora invites the insect tribes! From the gigantic banyan 
which covers acres with its shade, to the tiny fungus scarcely visible to 
the naked eye, the vegetable creation is one vast banquet at which her 
insect guests sit down. Perhaps not a single plant exists which does not 
afford a delicious food to some insect, not excluding even those most 
nauseous and poisonous to other animals—the acrid euphorbias, and the 
lurid henbane and nightshade. Nor is it a presumptuous supposition that 
a considerable proportion of these vegetables were created expressly for 
their entertainment and support. ‘The common netile is of little use either 
to mankind or the larger animals ; but you will not doubt its importance to 
the class of insects, when told that at least thirty distinct species feed 
upon it; and however important the oak may be to us, it is still more so 
to the insect world, of which Résel calculated that two hundred species 
either feed upon it, or upon other insect which do. But this is not all. 
The larger herbivorous animals are confined to a foliaceous or farinaceous 
diet. ‘They can subsist on no other part of a plant than its leaves and 
seeds, either in a recent or dried state, with the addition sometimes of the 
tender twigs or bark. Not so the insect race, to different tribes of which 
every part of a plant supplies appropriate food. Some attack its roots ; 
others select the trunk and branches; a third class feed upon the leaves; a 
fourth, with yet more delicate appetite, prefer the flowers ; and a fifth the 
fruit or seeds. Even still further selection takes place. Of those which 
feed upon the roots, stem, and branches of vegetables, some larve eat 
only the bark; others both the inner bark and alburnum (Scolytus, &c.) ; 
others the exuding resinous or other excretions (Orthotenia Resinella) ; 
a third class the pith (AZgeria tipuliformis) ; and a fourth penetrate into 
the heart of the solid wood (Prionus, Lamia, Cerambyx, &c.). Of those 
which prefer the leaves, some taste nothing but the sap which fills their 
veins (Aphides in all their states) ; others eat only the parenchyma, never 
touching the cuticle (subcutaneous Tinee) ; others only the lower surface 
of the leaf (many Tortrices) ; while a fourth description devour the whole 
substance of the leaf (most Lepidoptera). And of the flower-feeders, 
while some eat the very petals (Cucullia Verbasci, Xylina Linaria, &c.), 


252 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


others in their perfect state select the pollen which swells the anthers (bees, 
Lepture, and Mordelle); and a still larger clasg of these the honey 
secreted in the nectaries (most of the Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, and 
Diptera). 

Nor are insects confined to vegetables in their recent or unmanufactured 
state. A beam of oak, when it has supported the roof of a castle five 
hundred years, is as much to the taste of some (Anobia) as the same tree 
was in its growing state to that of others; another class (Ptini) would 
sooner feast on the herbarium of Brunfelsius than on the greenest herbs 
that grow ; and a third (some Tinea, Termites), to whom 


eg | ee Se a river and a sea 

Are a dish of tea, 

And a kingdom bread and butter,” 
would prefer the geographical treasures of Saxton or Speed, in spite of 
their ink and alum, to the freshest rind of the flax plant. The larva of a 
little fly (Oscinis cellaris), whose economy, as I can witness from my own 
observations, is admirably described by Mentzelius’, disdains to feed on any 
thing but wine or beer, which, like Boniface in the play, it may be said 
both to eat and drink; though, unlike its toping counterpart, indifferent 
to the age of its liquor, which, whether sweet or sour, is equally accep- 
table. 7 

A diversity of food almost as great may be boasted by the insects 

which feed on animal substances. Some (flesh-flies, carrion-beetles, &c.) 
devour dead carcasses only, which they will not touch until imbued with 
the haut gout of putridity. Others, like Mr. Bruce’s Abyssinians, prefer- 
ring their meat before it has passed through the hands of the butcher, 
select it from living victims, and may with justice pride themselves upon 
the peculiar freshness of their diet. Of these last, different tribes follow 
different procedures. ‘The Ichneumons devour the flesh of the insects into 
which they have insinuated themselves. Some of the Mstrz, fixed in a 
spacious apartment beneath the skin of an ox or deer, regale themselves 
on a purulent secretion with which they are surrounded. Others of the same 
tribe, partial to a higher temperature, attach themselves to the interior of 
the stomach of a horse, and in a bath of chyme of 102 degrees of Fah- 
renheit revel on its juices. ‘The various species of horse-flies dart their 
sharp lancets into the veins of quadrupeds, and satiate themselves in living 
streams; while the gnat, the flea, the bug, and the louse, plunge their 
proboscis even into those of us lords of the creation, and banquet on “the 
ruddy drops which warm our hearts.” Some make their repast upon 
birds only, as the fly of the swallow, and other Ornithomyia, and the bird- 
louse ; insects nearly allied, though one is dipterous and the other apte- 
rous. And a most singular animal belonging to the latter tribe (Nyctert- 
bia Vespertilionis) revenges upon the bat its ravages of the insect world? ; 
while snails give subsistence to Drilus flavescens, a beetle, and its singular 
apterous female, in the larva state, as well as to the larve of glow-worms.® 
Another numerous class kill their prey outright, either devouring its solid 
parts, as the predaceous and rove-beetles, &c., or imbibing its juices only, 


1 Ephem. German, An. xii. Obs. 58. Ray, Hist. Ins. 261. 

2 Jinn. Trans. xi. 11. ¢. 3. £. 5—7. 

3 Desmarest and Audouin in Ann. des Sciences Nat. i. 67. ii. 129. 443. vii. 353. ; quoted 
in Burmeister’s Manual of Ent. p. 552. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. ‘°* 253 


as the infinite hordes of the field-bug tribe. And the larve of the gnat, 
chameleon (Stratyomis), and other flies aquatic in that state, the leviathans 
of the world of animalcules, swallow whole hosts of these minute inhabi- 
tants of pools and ponds at a gulp, causing, with their oral apparatus, a 
vortex in the water, down which myriads of victims are incessantly hurried 
into their destructive maw. 

But not only animals themselves, almost every animal substance that 
can be named is the appropriate food of some insect. Multitudes find 
a delicious nutriment in excrements of various kinds. Matters apparently 
so indigestible as hair, wool, and leather, are the sole food of many moths 
in the larva state (Tinea tapetzella, pellionella, &c.). Even feathers are 
not rejected by others; and the grub of a beetle (Anthrenus Museorum), 
with powers of stomach which the dyspeptic sufferer may envy, will live 
luxuriously upon horn.! 

For the most part, insects feeding upon animal substances, will not touch 

_vegetables, and vice versé. You must not, however, take the rule without 
exceptions. Many caterpillars (as those of Thyatira derasa, Chariclea 
Delphinii, &c.), though plants are their proper food, will occasionally 
devour other caterpillars, and sometimes even their own species. The 
large green grasshopper (Acrida viridissima), and probably others of the 
Order, will eat smaller insects as well as its usual vegetable food? ; so also will 
the larve of many Phryganee. Allantus marginellus, as I was last summer 
amused by witnessing, like many Scotophage, sips the nectar of umbel- 
liferous plants only till a fly comes within its reach, pouncing upon which 
it gladly quits its vegetable for an animal repast. -Anobium paniceum, 
which ordinarily feeds upon biscuit, was, as I have before mentioned, once 
found by Mr. Sheppard in great abundance living upon the dried Cantha- 
rides (Cantharis vesicatoria) of the shops. On the other hand, Necropho- 
rus mortuorum, which subsists on carcasses, and many other carnivorous 
species, will make a hearty meal of a putrid fungus. Ptmus Fur devours 
indifferently dried birds or plants, not refusing even tobacco; and from the 
impossibility that one of a million of the innumerable swarms of gnats 
which abound in swampy places, particularly in regions which but for 
them would be lost to sensitive existence, should ever taste blood, it seems 
clear that they are usually contented with vegetable aliment. Indeed the 
males, as well as those of the horse-fly, of which even the females readily 
imbibed the sugared fluid offered to them by Reaumur’?, never suck blood 
at all; so that they must either feed on vegetable matter, which in fact I 
have observed them to do, or fast during their whole existence in the per- 
fect state. 

Though insects, generally considered, have thus a much more extensive 
bill of fare than the larger animals, each individual species is commonly 
limited to a more restricted diet. Many both of animal and vegetable 
feeders are absolutely confined to one kind of food, and cannot exist upon 
any other. The larva of @strus Equi can subsist no where but in the 
stomach of the horse or ass; which animals, therefore, this insect might 
boast with some show of reason to have been created for its use rather 
than for ours, being to us useful only, but to it indispensable. The larve 
of Sceva Pyrastri, according to De Geer, eat no other Aphis but that of 


1 De Geer, iv. 210. ? Brahm, Insekten Kalender, i. 190. 3 Reaum. iv. 280. 
22 


254 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


the rose.!_ Most Ichneumons and Sphecina prey each upon a single species 
of insect only, which therefore they would seem to"have been formed for 
the express purpose of keeping within due-limits. Reaumur mentions 
having once found in a parcel of decaying wood the nests of six different 
kinds of the latter tribe, each of which was filled with flies of a distinct 
species.2 Cerceris auritus and Philanthus letus in the larva state feed 
solely on the weevil tribe of Coleoptera, the latter being restricted even to 
the short-rostrumed family, as Otiorhynchus raucus, &c.?; while Bembex 
rostrata, another hymenopterous insect, selects flies, as Musca Cesar, &c.* 

A very large proportion of species, however, are able to subsist on 
several kinds of food. Amongst the carnivorous tribes, it is indifferent to 
most of those which prey upon putrid substances from what source they 
have been derived: and the predaceous insects, such as the Libellulina, 
Telephorus, Empis, the Araneide, &c., will attack most smaller insects 
inferior to them in strength, not excepting in many instances their own 
species. The wax-moth larva (Galleria Cereana) will for want of wax 
eat paper, wafers, wool, &c.°: another Tinea described by Reaumur, 
and before adverted to, attacks chocolate,® which cannot have been its 
natural food, even selecting that most highly perfumed ; and the Tinee 
which devour dressed wool, but happily for the farmer and wool-stapler 
refuse it when unwashed, must have existed when no manufactured wool 
was accessible. The vegetable feeders are under greater restrictions, yet 
probably the majority can subsist on different kinds of food. ‘This is 
certainly true of most lepidopterous larve, several of which, as well as 
many Coleoptera (Haltica oleracea, &c.), are poly phagous, eating almost 
every plant. It is worthy of remark, however, that when some of these 
have fed for a time on one plant they will die rather than eat another, 
which would have been perfectly acceptable to them if accustomed to it 
from the first.7. Here too it must be borne in mind, that by far the greater 
part of insects feed upon different substances in their different states of 
existence, eating one kind of food in the larva and another in the imago 
state. This is the case with the whole Order Lepidoptera, which in the 

former eat plants chiefly, in the latter nothing but honey or the sweet juices 
of fruit, which they have often been observed to imbibe; and the same 
rule obtains also in regard to most dipterous and hymenopterous insects. 
Those which eat one kind of food in both states are chiefly of the remain- 
ing orders. 

I have said that insects, like other animals, draw their subsistence from 
the vegetable or animal kingdoms. But I ought not to omit noticing that 
some authors have conceived that several species feed upon mineral sub- 
stances." Not to dwell upon Barchewitz’s idle tale of East Indian ants 
which eat iron’, or on the stone-eating caterpillars recorded in the Memoirs 


1 De Geer, vi. 112. 

2 Reaum. vi. 271.; and M. L. Dufour has recently described a species of sand-wasp 
(Cerceris), which selects various species of Buprestis as the food of its progeny, some of 
which are of the greatest rarity to collectors. 

3 Entomologische Bemerkungen (Braunschweig, 1799), p. 6. 

4 Latreille, Obs. sur les Hymenoptéres. Ann. de Mus. xiv. 412. 

5 Reaum. iii. 257. 6 Ibid. iii. 277. 7 Tbid. ii. 324. 

8 For an instance in which an insect, usually subsisting upon animal food, derived nutri- 
ment from a mineral substance, see Philos. Mag. &c. for January, 1823. 

9 Lesser, L. i. 259, 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 255 


of the French Academy!, which are now known to erode the walls on 
which they are found solely for the purpose of forming their cocoons, 
Reaumur and Swammerdam have both stated the food of the larve of 
Ephemere to be earth, that being the only substance ever found in the 
stomachs and intestines, which are filled with it. This supposition, which 
if correct renders invalid the definition by which Mirbel (and my friend 
Dr. Alderson of Hull long before him) proposed to distinguish the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms, is certainly not inadmissible; for, though we 
might not be inclined to give much weight to Father Paulian’s history of 
a flint-eater who digested flints and stone”, the testimony of Humboldt 
seems to prove that the human race is capable of drawing nutriment from 
earth, which, if the odious Ottomaques can digest and assimilate, may 
doubtless afford support to the larve of Ephemere. Yet, after all, it is 
perhaps more probable that these insects feed on the decaying vegetable 
matter intermixed with the earth in which they reside, from which after 
being swallowed it is extracted by the action of the stomach: like the 
sand that, from being found in a similar situation, Borelli erroneously sup- 
posed to be the food of many T'estacea, though in fact a mere extraneous 
substance. 

The majority of insects, either imbibing their food in a liquid state, or 
feeding on succulent substances, require no aqueous fluid for diluting it. 
Water, however, is essential to bees, ants, and some other tribes, which 
drink it with avidity ; as well as in warm climates to many Lepidoptera, 
which are there chiefly taken in court-yards, near the margins of drains, 
&c.3 Even some larve which feed upon juicy leaves have been observed 
to swallow drops of dew ; and one of them (Odonestis potatoria), which 
(according to Goedart) after drinking lifts up its head like a hen, has 
received its name from this circumstance. ‘That it is not the mere want 
of succulency in the food which induces the necessity of drink is plain 
from those larve which live entirely on substances so dry that it is almost 
unaccountable whence the juices of their body are derived. The grub of an 
Anobium will feed for months upon a chair that has been baking before 
the fire for half a century, and from which even the chemist’s retort could 
scarcely extract a drop of moisture ; and will yet have its body as well 
filled with fluids as that of a leaf-fed caterpillar. 

By far the greater part of insects always feed themselves. ‘The young, 
however, of those which live in societies, as the hive and humble-bees, 
wasps, ants, &c., are fed by the older inhabitants of the community, 
which also frequently feed each other. Many of these last insects are 
distinguished from the majority of their race, which live from day to day 
and take no thought for the morrow, by the circumstance of storing up 
food. Of those which feed themselves, the larger proportion have imposed 
upon them the task of providing for their own wants; but the tribe of 
Spheges, wild bees, and some others, are furnished in the larva state by 
the parent insect with a supply of food sufficient for their consumption 
until they have attained maturity. 


1 x. 458. 2 Dictionnaire Physique. 

3 Mr. Doubleday has observed the habit which butterflies have of settling on damp mud 
on road sides in the United States, where they congregate in groups, sometimes literally 
consisting of hundreds of individuals clustered together on a few yards of mud ( West- 
wood, Arc. Ent. i. p. 144.) The same habit may occasionally be noticed in this country. 


256 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


¥ 


As to their time of feeding, insects may be divided into three great 
classes: the day-feeders, the night-feeders, and these which feed indif- 
ferently at all times. You have been apt to think, I dare say, that when 
the sun’s warmer beams have waked the insect youth, and 


“Ten thousand forms, ten thousand different tribes, 
People the blaze,” 


you see before you the whole insect world. You are not aware that a 
host as numerous shun the glare of day, and, like the votaries of fashion, 
rise not from their couch until their more vulgar brethren have retired to 
rest. While the painted butterfly, the “fervent bees,” and the quivering 
nations of flies, which sport 


“ Thick in yon stream of light, a thousand ways, 
Upward and downward thwarting and convolved,” 


love to bask in the sun’s brightest rays, and search for their food amidst 
his noontide fervor, an immense multitude stir not before the sober time of 
twilight, and eat only when night has overshadowed the earth. Then 
only the vast tribe of moths quit their hiding-places; ‘the shard-born? 
beetle with his drowsy hum,” accompanied by numerous others of his 
order, sallies forth; the airy gnat-flies institute their dances; and the 
solitary spider stretches his net. All these retire into concealment at the 
approach of light. Some few larve (Agrotis exclamationis, &c.) have 
similar habits, and those of one singular genus before adverted to (Nycte- 
robius) are remarkable for providing in the night a store of food which 
they consume in the day; but to the generality of these the period of 
feeding is indifferent, and most of them seem to eat with little intermission 
night and day. 

Insects, like other animals, take in their food by the mouth (in Chermes 
and Coccus, indeed, the rostrum seems to be, but really is not, inserted in 
the breast, between the fore-legs) ; but there is one exception to this rule. 
The singular Uropoda vegetans, which is such a plague to some beetles, 
derives its nutriment from them by means of a filiform pedicle or umbilical 
cord attached to its anus; and what increases the singularity, sometimes 
several of these mites form a kind of chain, of which the first only is fixed 
by its pedicle to the beetle, each of the remainder being similarly con- 
nected with the one that precedes it; so that the nutriment drawn from 
the beetle passes to the last through the bodies and umbilical cords of the 
individuals which are intermediate. Some have regarded these bodies as 


1 In the controversy between the commentators on Shakespeare, as to whether shard * 
means wing-cases, dung, or a fragment of earthenware, and whether dorn should be spelled 
with or without the e, it might have thrown some weight into the scale of those who contend 
for the orthography adopted above, and that the meaning of shard in this place is dung, if 
they had been aware that the beetle (Geotrupes stercorarius) is actually born amongst dung, 
and no where else ; and that no beetle which makes a hum in flying can with propriety be 
said, as Dr. Johnson has interpreted the epithet in his Dictionary, “to be born amongst 
broken stones or pots.’? That Shakespeare alladed to the Beetle, and not to the Cockchafer 
(Melolontha vulgaris), seems clear from the fact of the former being to be heard in all places 
almost every fine evening in the summer, while the latter is common only in particular dis- 
tricts, and at one period of the year.—S. 

2 De Geer, vii. 123. 


* Sharn is the common name of cow-dung in the North; therefore Shakespeare probably 
wrote sharn-born. (Mr. MacLeay.) See for various authorities on this question a note 
by Mr. Bennett in the Zoological Journal, v. 198.; and Mr. Patterson’s “ Letters on the 
Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakespeare’s Plays.” 


FOOD OF INSECTS. Q57 


true eggs; and their analogy with the pedunculated eggs of Trombidium 
aquaticum, which also seem to derive nourishment from the water-boat- 
men, &c., to which they are fixed, and still more the circumstance of their 
ultimately losing their pedicle and detaching themselves from the infested 
beetles, give plausibility to the idea. Yet these animals are certainly 
furnished with feet, and have, according to De Geer", a part resembling a 
mouth—characters which cannot be attributed to any egg. 

In the variety of their instruments of nutrition, which you must bear in 
mind are often quite different in the larva and perfect states, insects leave 
all other animals far behind. In common with them, a vast number (the 
orders Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, and Orthoptera, and the larve of Lept- 
doptera, some Diptera, &c.) are furnished with jaws, but of very different 
constructions, and all admirably adapted for their intended services: some 
sharp, and armed with spines and branches for tearing flesh, others hooked 
for seizing, and at the same time hollow for suction ; some calculated like 
shears for knawing leaves, others more resembling grindstones, of a strength 
and solidity sufficient to reduce the hardest wood to powder: and this 
singularity attends the major part of these insects, that they possess in 
fact two pairs of jaws, an upper and an, under pair, both placed horizon- 
tally, not vertically ; the former apparently in most cases for the seizure 
and mastication of their prey; the latter, when hooked, for retaining and 
tearing, while the upper comminute it previously to its being swallowed. 

To the remainder of the class of insects, a mighty host, jaws would 
have been useless. Their refined liquid food requires instruments of a 
different construction, and with these they are profusely furnished. The 
innumerable tribes of moths and butterflies eat nothing but the honey 
secreted in the nectaries of flowers, which are frequently situated at the 
bottom of a tube of great length. They are accordingly provided with 
an organ exquisitely fitted for its office—a slender tubular tongue, more or 
less long, sometimes not shorter than three inches, but spirally convoluted 
when at rest, like the mainspring of a watch, into a convenient com- 
pass. This tongue, which they have the power of instantly unrolling, 
they dart into the bottom of a flower, and, as though a siphon, draw up a 
supply of the delicious nectar on which they feed. A letter would 
scarcely suffice for describing fully the admirable structure of this organ. 
I must content myself, therefore, with here briefly observing that it is of a 
cartilaginous substance, and apparently composed of a series of innumer- 
able rings, which, to be capable of such rapid convolution, must be moved 
by an equal number of distinct muscles; and that, though seemingly 
simple, it is in fact composed of three distinct tubes—the two lateral ones 
cylindrical and entire, intended, as Reaumur thinks, for the reception of 
air, and the intermediate one, through which alone the honey is conveyed, 
nearly square, and formed of two separate grooves projecting from the 
lateral tubes; which grooves, by means of a most curious apparatus of 
hooks like those in the lamine of a feather, inosculate into each other, 
and can be either united into an air-tight canal, or be instantly separated, 
at the pleasure of the insect.® 

Another numerous race, the whole of the order Hemiptera, abstract the 


1 De Geer, vii. 126. 
* For a full desciption of this instrument, sce Reaum. i. 125, &c. 


22* 


258 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


juices of plants or of animals by means of an instrument of a construction 
altogether different—a hollow grooved beak, often jointed, and containing 
four bristle-formed lancets, which, at the same time that they pierce the food, 
apply to each other so accurately as to form one air-tight tube, through 
which the little animals suck up! their repast; thus forming a pump, 
which, more effective than ours, digs the well from which it draws the fluid. 

A third description of insects, those of the order Diptera, comprising 
the whole tribe of flies, have a sucker formed on the same general plan as 
that last described, but of a much more complicated and varied structure. 
It is in like manner composed of a grooved case and several included 
lancets ; but the case, although horny, rigid, and beak-like in some, is in 
others fleshy, flexible, and more resembling the proboscis of an elephant, 
and terminates in two turgid liplets; and the accompanying Jancets are 
themselves included in an upper hollow case, in connexion with which 
they probably compose an air-tight tube for suction. The number and 
form of these instruments are extremely various. In some genera (Musca) 
there is but one, which resembles a sharp lancet. Others (Emphis, Asilus) 
have three, the two lateral ones needle-shaped, that in the middle like 
a scimitar; together forming so keen an apparatus, that De Geer has 
seen an Asilus pierce with it the elytra of a lady-bird; and I have myself 
caught them with not only an Elater and weevil, but even a Hister in 
their mouths. In many horse-flies we find four; two precisely resembling 
lancets, and two, even to the very handles, buck-hafted carving knives. 
The blood-thirsty gnat has five, some acutely lanced at the extremity, 
and others serrated on one side. The flea, the spider, the scorpion, have 
all instruments for taking their food of a construction altogether different. 
But it is impossible here to attempt even a sketch of the variations in 
these organs which take place in the apterous genera, and in many of the 
dipterous larve. Suffice it to say, that they all manifest the most consum- 
mate skill in their adaptation to the purposes of the insects which are 
provided with them, and which can often employ them not only as instru- 
ments for preparing food, but as weapons of offence and defence, as tools 
in the building of their nests, and even as feet. 

Some insects in their perfect state, though furnished with organs of 
feeding, make no use of them, and consume no food whatever. Of this 
description are the moth which proceeds from the silk-worm, and several 
others of the same order ; the different species of gad-flies, and the Ephe- 
mere—insects whose history is so well known as to afford a moral or a 
simile to those most ignorant of natural history. All these live so short a 
time in the perfect state as to need no food. Indeed it may be laid down 
as a general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less than in 
that of larve. The voracious caterpillar, when transformed into a butter- 
fly, needs only a small quantity of honey ; and the gluttonous maggot, 
when become a fly, contents itself with an occasional drop or two of any 
sweet liquid. 

While in the state of larve the quantity of food consumed by insects 


1 The mode, however, in which this is effected, in all insects furnished with a proboscis, 
can scarcely be by suction, strictly so called, or the abstraction of air, since the air-vessels 
of insects do not communicate with their mouths: it is more probably performed in part 
by capillary attraction; and, as Lamarck has suggested (Syst. des Anim. sans Vertébres, 
p. 193.), in part by a succession of undulations and contractions of the sides of the organ. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 259 


is vastly greater in proportion to their bulk than that required by larger 
animals. Many caterpillars eat daily twice their weight of leaves, which 
is as if an ox, weighing sixty stone, were to devour every twenty-four 
hours three quarters of a ton of grass—a power of stomach which our 
graziers may thank their stars that their oxen are not endowed with. A 
probable proximate cause for this voracity in the case of herbivorous larve 
has been assigned by John Hunter, who attributes it to the circumstance 
of their stomach not having the power of dissolving the vegetable matters 
received into it, but merely of extracting from them a juice.’ This is 
proved both by their excrement, which consists of coiled-up and hardened 
particles of leaf, that being put into water expand like tea; and by the 
great proportion which the excrement bears to the quantity of food con- 
sumed. From experiments, with a detail of which he has favored me, 
made by Colonel Machell of Beverly on the caterpillars of Euprepia 
Caja, he ascertained that, though a larva weighing thirty-six grains voided 
every twelve hours from fifteen to eighteen grains’ weight of excrement, 
it did not increase in weight in the same period more than one or two 
grains. On the other hand, many carnivorous Jarve increase in weight in 
full proportion to the food consumed, and that in an astonishing degree. 
Redi found that the maggots of flesh-flies, of which, one day, twenty-five 
or thirty did not weigh above a grain, the next weighed seven grains each ; 
having thus in twenty-four hours become about two hundred times heavier 
than before.? 

Some insects have the faculty of sustaining a long abstinence from all 
kinds of food. This seems to depend upon the nature of their habits. 
If the insect feeds on a substance of a deficiency of which there is not 
much probability, as on vegetables, &c., it commonly requires a frequent 
supply ; if, on the contrary, it is an insect of prey, and exposed to the 
danger of being long deprived of its food, it is often endowed with a 
power of fasting, which would be incredible but for the numerous facts 
by which it is authenticated. The ant-lion will exist without the smallest 
supply of food, apparently uninjured, for six months; though, when it 
can get it, it will devour daily an insect of its own size. Vaillant, whose 
authority may be here taken, assures us that he kept a spider without food 
under a sealed glass for ten months, at the end of which time, though 
shrunk in size, it was as vigorous as ever.’ And Mr. Baker, so well 
known for his microscopical discoveries, states that he kept a darkling 
beetle (Blaps mortisaga) alive for three years without food of any kind.‘ 
Some insects, not of a predaceous description, are gifted with a similar 
power of abstinence. Leeuwenhoek tells us that a mite, which he had 
gummed alive to the point of a needle and placed before his microscope, 
lived in that situation eleven weeks®; and Mr. Stephens, having, in June, 
1831, put a specimen of Lepisma saccharina (the common “ wood”? or 
‘¢ sugar fish’’) in a pill-box containing only a few grains of magnesia, found 
it, to his great surprise, alive and active in June, 1833, after this pro- 
tracted confinement, without food, of two years.® 


1 Obs. on the Animal CEconomy, p. 221. Compare Reaum. ii. 167. 

2 Redi de Insectis, 39. 3 New Travels, i. xxxix. 

4 Phil. Trans. 1740, p. 441. I confess, notwithstanding Mr. Baker’s general accuracy, 
that I suspect some mistake here. 

5 Leeuw. Op. ii, 363.. 6 Entom. Mag. i. 526. 


260 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


In some cases the very want of food, however paradoxical the proposi- 
tion, seems actually to be a mean of prolonging thé life of insects. At 
least one such instance has fallen under my own observation. The 
aphidivorous flies, such as Sceva Pyrastri, &c., live in the larva state ten 
or twelve days, in the pupa state about a fortnight, and as perfect insects 
possibly as Jong, the whole term of their existence in summer not exceed- 
ing at the very utmost six weeks. But one!, which I put under a glass 
on the 2d of June, 1811, when about half grown, and, after supplying it with 
Aphides once or twice, by accident forgot, I found, to my great astonishment, 
alive three months after ; and it actually lived until the June following with- 
out a particle of food. It had, therefore, existed in the larva state more than 
eight times as long as it would have lived in all its states, if it had regu- 
larly undergone its metamorphoses, which is as extraordinary a prolonga- 
tion of life asif a man were to live 560 years. It is true that its existence 
was not worth having even to the larva of a fly. For the last eight 
months it remained without motion, attached by its posterior pair of tuber- 
cles to the paper on which it was placed, manifesting no other symptoms 
of life than by moving the fore part of the body when touched, and 
replacing itself on its belly if turned upon its back. But this was quite 
enough to prove it still alive. I can attribute this singular result to no 
other circumstance than its having been deprived of a sufficient quantity 


of food to bring it into the pupa state, though provided with enough for 


the attainment of nearly its full growth as larva. Possibly the same 
remote cause might act in this case, as operates to prolong the term of 
existence of annual plants that have been prevented from perfecting their 
seed; and it would almost seem to favor the hypothesis of some physiolo- 
gists, who contend that every organized being has a certain portion of 
irritability originally imparted to it, and that its life will be long or short 
as this is slowly or rapidly excited—no great consolation this for the 
advocates for fast-living, unless they are in good earnest in their affected 


cP) 


preference of a “short life and a merry one ;” though it must be admitted 


that they would have the best of the argument, were the alternative such ° 


a state of torpid insensibility as that with which our larva purchased the 
prolongation of its existence. 


After this general view of the food of insects, and of circumstances 
connected with it, I proceed to give you an account of some peculiarities 
in their modes of procuring it. 

The vegetable feeders have, for the most part, but little difficulty in 
supplying their wants. In the larva state they generally find themselves 
placed by the parent insect upon the very plant or substance which is to 
nourish them; and in their perfect state their wings or feet afford a ready 
conveyance to the banquet to which, by an unerring sense, they are 
directed. All nature lies before them, and it is only when their numbers 


Sas i ee ee ee se ee 

1 Not having ever met with another specimen, I am unable to say of what precise species 
of aphidivorous fly it is the larva; nor can I find a figure of it, though it approaches near 
to one given by De Geer (vi. t. 7. f. 1—3.). Its shape is oblong-oval, length about four 
lines, and color pale red sprinkled with black. Each of the seven or eight segments which 
compose the body projects on each side into three serrated flat aculei or teeth; three or four 
similar but smaller aculei arm the head ; and two, much larger than the rest, the anus, one 
on each side of the usual bifid protuberance which bears the respiratory plates. A bifid 
tubercular elevation is also placed in the middle of the back of each segment. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 261 


are extraordinarily increased, or in consequence of some unusual destruc- 
tion of their appropriate aliment, that they perish for want. ‘The descrip- 
tion of their food renders unnecessary those artifices to which many of the 
carnivorous insects are obliged to have recourse; and none of them, 
if we except the white ants, whose cunning mode of insinuating themselves 
into houses in tropical climates has been detailed in a former letter, can 
be said to use stratagem in obtaining their food. 

Of the carnivorous species, the greater proportion attack their prey by 
open violence; such as the predaceous beetles, the Ichneumons, burrow- 
ing wasps, and true wasps; the praying insects (Mantis) ; the bugs (Geo- 
coris@ Latr.); dragon flies (Libellulina), &c., which have been before 
adverted to. But a very considerable aiiabier, chiefly, however, of one 
tribe, that of spiders, provide their sustenance solely by artifice and strata- 
gem, the singularity of which, and the admirable adaptation of the 
instruments by which they take their prey to the end in view, afford a 
most wonderful instance of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and 
have attracted admiration in all ages. A description of these, however, 
which will require a detailed survey, I must defer to another letter. 

IT am, &c. 


262 


LETTER XIII. 


FOOD OF INSECTS—continued. 
STRATAGEMS EMPLOYED IN PROCURING IT. 


Tue stratagems of insects in obtaining their food are now to engage our 
attention. I shall not dwell on those inartificial modes of surprising their 
prey, of which examples may be found amongst almost every order of 
insects, such as watching behind a leaf or other object affording conceal- 
ment until its approach, but shall proceed to describe the various artifices 
of the race of spiders, of which there are several hundred distinct species, 
differing essentially from each other both in characters and manners. 

Many of these are constantly under our eyes; and were it not that we 
are accustomed to neglect what is the subject of daily occurrence, we 
should never behold a spider’s web without astonishment. What, if we 
had not witnessed it, would seem more incredible than that any animal 
should spin threads; weave these threads into nets more admirable than 
ever fowler or fisherman fabricated ; suspend them with the nicest judg- 
ment in the place most abounding in the wished-for prey, and there con- 
cealed, watch patiently its approach? In this case, as in so many others, 
we neglect actions in minute animals, which in the larger would excite our 
endless admiration. How would the world crowd to see a fox which 
should spin ropes, weave them into an accurately-meshed net, and extend 
this net between two trees for the purpose of entangling a flight of birds ? 
Or should we think we had ever expressed sufficient wonder at seeing a 
fish which obtained its prey by a similar contrivance? Yet there would, 
in reality, be nothing more marvelous in their procedures than in those 
of spiders, which, indeed, the minuteness of the agent renders more 
wonderful. 

All spiders do not spin webs. A considerable number adopt other 
means for catching insects. Of these I shall speak hereafter. At present 
I shall endeavor to give you a clear idea of the operations of the weavers, 
explaining successively the instruments by which they spin, the mode of 
forming their nets, together with the various descriptions of them, and the 
manner in which they entrap and secure their prey. 

The thread spun by spiders is in substance similar to the silk of the 
silk-worm and other caterpillars, but of a much finer quality. As in them, 
it proceeds from reservoirs, into which it is secreted in the form of a viscid 
gum ; but in the mode of its extrication is very dissimilar, issuing not from 
the mouth, but the hinder part of the abdomen. If you examine a spider, 
you will perceive in this part four or six little teat-like protuberances or 
spinners. ‘These are the machinery through which, by a process more 
singular than that of rope-spinning, the thread is drawn. Each spinner 
is furnished with a multitude of tubes, so numerous and so exquisitely 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 263 


fine, that a space often not much bigger than the pointed end of a pin, is 
furnished, according to Reaumur!, with a thousand of them. From each 
of these tubes, consisting of two pieces, the last of which terminates in a 
point infinitely fine, proceeds a thread of inconceivable tenuity, which, 
immediately after issuing from it, unites with all the other threads into one. 
Hence from each spinner proceeds a compound thread ; and these four 
(or six) threads, at the distance of about one tenth of an inch from the 
apex of the spinners, again unite, and form the thread we are accustomed 
to see, which the spider uses in forming its web. The threads, however, 
are not all of the same thickness, for Leeuwenhoek observed that some of 
the tubes were larger than others, and furnished a larger thread. ‘Thus a 
spider’s thread, even spun by the smallest species, and when so fine that 
it is almost imperceptible to our senses, is not, as we suppose, a single 
line, but a rope composed of at least four thousand strands.” But to feel 
all the wonder of this fact we must follow Leeuwenhoek in one of his 
calculations on the subject. This renowned microscopic observer estimated 
that the threads of the minutest spiders, some of which are not larger 
than a grain of sand, are so fine that four millions of them would not 
equal in thickness one of the hairs of his beard—a tenuity utterly beyond 
the power of the imagination to conceive. Of the probable accuracy of 
this calculation, you may any day in summer convince yourself, by taking 
one of the large diadem spiders (petra Diadema), and, after pressing its 
abdomen against a leaf or other substance, so as to attach the threads to 
the surface—the same preliminary step which the spider adopts in spin- 
ning—drawing it gradually to a small distance. You will plainly perceive 
that the proper thread of the spider is formed of four smaller threads, and 
these again of threads so fine and numerous, that there cannot be fewer 
than a thousand issue from each spinner ; and if you pursue your researches 
with the microscope, you will find that precisely the same takes place in 
the minutest species that spins. You will inquire what can be the end of 
machinery so complex? One probable reason is, that it was necessary 
for drying the gum sufficiently to form a tenacious line, that an extensive 
surface should be exposed to the air, which is admirably effected by divid- 


1 Reaum. Mém. del’ Acad. de Paris, An. 1713. 211.—De Geer, vii. 187. See also Hoole’s 
Leeumenhoek, i. 44.—t. 2. f. 20—22. Leeuwenhoek examined a spinner that was not so big 
as acommon grain of sand, and the number of tubes issuing from it was more than a hun- 
dred. He affirms that, besides the larger spinners, in the space between them there ure 
four smaller ones, each furnished with organs for spinning threads, but smaller and fewer 
in number, Latreille speaks only of a thousand spinners from each teat, and of six thou- 
sand threads from the whole—but he does not enter further into the subject. Nouv. Dict. 
@ Hist. Nat. ii. 278. 

2 Mr. Blackwall, however, as the result of his examinations with microscopes of high 
powers, denies that spiders’ threads are composed of so many fine lines as Leeuwenhoek, 
Lyonnet, Treviranus, &c., have supposed. He has not, he says, found that any lines ever 
issue, as they describe, from the minute apertures without projecting margins, situated 
between the papille or spinning tubes, which last alone he regards as the sole line-forming 
instruments, and the total number of these in the larger adult species of Epezra, which are 
best provided with them, he does not estimate at much above a thousand, while in the com- 
mon house spider they are below four hundred, and in other species not above one hun- 
dred, and in some much fewer. As the statements of such careful and generally avcurate 
observers as Reaumur, De Geer, Leeuwenhoek, Lyonnet, Treviranus, and other eminent 
naturalists, all in the main agreeing and confirming each other, ought not to be hastily set 
aside and without the fullest investigation, it has been thought best, without materially 
altering the text, simply to point out in the present note Mr. Blackwall’s different conclu- 
sions, and to refer the reader for the details on which they rest to his paper on the Mam- 
mule of Spiders in the 18th vol. of the Linnean Transactions, p. 219. 


264 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


ing it at its exit from the abdomen into such ae threads. But the 
chief cause, perhaps, is the occasion (hereafter to be adverted to) which 
the spider sometimes has to employ its threads in their finer and uncon- 
nected state before they unite to form a single one. ‘The spider is gifted 
by her Creator with the power of closing the orifices of the spinners at 
pleasure, and can thus, in dropping from a height by her line, stop her 
progress at any point of her descent ; and, according to Lister’, she is also 
able to retract her threads within the abdomen ; but this is doubted, and 
with apparent reason, by De Geer.? 

The only other instruments employed by the spider in weaving are her 
feet, with the claws of which she usually guides, or keeps separated into 
two or more, the line from behind ; and in many species these are admi- 
rably adapted for the purpose, two of them being furnished underneath 
with teeth like those of a comb, by means of which the threads are kept 
asunder. But another instrument was wanting. ‘The spider, in ascend- 
ing the line by which she has dronped herself from an eminence, winds 
up the superfluous cord into a ball. In performing this the pectinated 
claws would not have been suitable. She is therefore furnished with 
a third claw between the other two, and-is thus provided for every 
occasion. 

The situations in which spiders place their nests are as various as their 
construction. Some prefer the open air, and suspend them in the midst 
of shrubs or plants most frequented by flies and other small insects, fixing 
them in a horizontal, a vertical, or an oblique direction. Others select 
the corners of windows and of rooms, where prey always abounds ; while 
many establish themselves in stables and neglected out-houses, and even 
in cellars and desolate places in which one would scarcely expect a fly to 
be caught ina month. It is with the operations of these last especially 
that we are accustomed to associate the ideas of neglect and desertion by 
man—associations which, both in painting and allegory, have been often 
happily applied. Hogarth, when he wished to produce a speaking picture 
of neglected charity, clothed the poor’s box in one of his pieces with a 
spider’s net; and the Jews, in one of the fables with which they have 
disfigured the records of Holy Writ, have not less ingeniously availed 
themselves of the same idea. They relate that the reason why Saul did 
not discover David and his men in the cave of Adullam* was, that God 
had sent a spider which had quickly woven a web across the entrance of 
the cave in which they were concealed ; which being observed by Saul, 
he thought it useless to investigate further a spot bearing such evident 
proofs of the absence of any human being.® 

The most incurious observer must have remarked the great difference 
which exists in the construction of spiders’ webs. Those which we most 
commonly see in houses are of a woven texture similar to fine gauze, and 
are appropriately termed webs; while those most frequently met with in 
the fields are composed of a series of concentric circles united by radii 


! Hist. Anim, Ang. p. 8. 

® De Geer, vii. 189. Mr, Blackwall has explained that this apparent retraction, which is 
chiefly perceptible in the line forming the concentric circles of the geometric spiders, is an 
optical illusion, depending on its extreme elasticity, which admits of its being extended 
several inches and of contracting again into a minute globule, (Zool. Journ. v. 187.) 

3 Leeuw. Opusc. iii, 317. f. 1. 41 Sam, xxiv. 4. 5 Lesser, L. ii. 291. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 265 


diverging from the centre, the threads being remote from each other. 
These last, which in their simple state, or still more when studded with 
dew drops, you must have a thousand times admired, are with greater 
propriety termed nets; and the insects which form them proceeding on 
geometrical principles may be called geometricians, while the former can 
aspire only to the humbler denomination of weavers. I shall endeavor 
to describe the process followed in the construction of both, beginning 
with the latter. 

The weaving spider which is found in houses, having selected some 
corner for the site of her web, and determined its extent, presses her spin- 
ners against one of the walls, and thus glues to it one end of her thread. 
She then walks along the wall to the opposite side, and there in like 
manner fastens the other end. ‘This thread, which is to form the outer 
‘margin or selvage of her web, and requires strength, she triples or quad- 
ruples by a repetition of the operation just described ; and from it she 
draws other threads in various directions, the interstices of which she fills 
up by running from one to the other, and connecting them by new threads 
until the whole has assumed the gauze-like texture which we see. Books 
of natural history, all copying from one another, have described these 
kinds of web as fabricated of a regular warp and woof, or of parallel 
. longitudinal lines crossed at right angles by transverse ones glued to them 
at the points of intersection. ‘This, however, is clearly erroneous, as you 
will see by the slightest examination of a web of this kind, in which no 
such regularity of texture can be discovered. 

The webs just described present merely a simple horizontal surface, but 
others more frequently seen in out-houses and amongst bushes possess a 
very artificial appendage. Besides the main web, the spider carries up 
from its edges and surface a number of single threads, often to the height 
of many feet, joining and crossing each other in various directions. Across 
these lines, which may be compared to the tackling of a ship, flies seem 
unable to avoid directing their flight. ‘The certain consequence is, that in 
striking against these ropes they become slightly entangled, and, in their 
endeavors to disengage themselves, rarely escape being precipitated into 
the net spread underneath for their reception, where their doom is inevitable. 

But the net is still incomplete. It is necessary that our hunter should 
conceal her grim visage from the game for which she lies in wait. She 
does not, therefore, station herself upon the surface of her net, but in a 
small silken apartment constructed below it, and completely hidden from 
view. ‘In this corner,” to use the quaint translation of Pliny by Phile- 
mon Holland, Doctor in Physic!, “with what subtiltie doth she retire, 
making semblance as though she meant nothing less than that she doth, 
and as if she went about some other business! nay, how close lieth she, 
that it is impossible to see whether any one be within or no!” But thus 
removed to a distance from her net and entirely out of sight of it, how is 
she to know when her prey is entrapped? For this difficulty our ingenious 
weaver has provided. She has taken care to spin several threads from the 
edge of the net to that of her hole, which at once inform her by their 
vibrations of the capture of a fly, and serve as a bridge on which in an 
instant she can run to secure it. 


1 L. Xi..c. 24, 


23 


266 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


Another species, Clubiona atrox, for an account of whose habits we are 
indebted to Mr. Blackwall, resides in a funnel-shaped silken tube of slight 
texture, in the corners of windows, or crevices in old walls, &c., whence 
it extends lines intersecting each other irregularly at various angles, to 
which it attaches otber lines, or rather fasciculi, of very fine zig-zag threads 
of a pale blue tint when recent, and of a much more complicated structure 
than the former, and which adhere strongly to any flies, &c. coming into 
contact with them, not from any viscidity, but from their extremely fine 
filaments attaching themselves to the inequalities in the surface of their 
prey. These pale-blue fasciculi Mr. Blackwall found to proceed from 
two additional spinners (or mammule) peculiar to this species and to three 
species of Drassus, which are also all four remarkable for having the 
metatarsal joint of their posterior legs furnished with a very curious comb- 
ing or rather curling instrument, composed of two parallel rows of curved 
spines, named by Mr. Blackwall Calamistrum, with which they comb out 
the peculiar silky material as it issues from these mammule into that floc- 
culous texture which gives the pale-blue fasciculi in question their power 
of retaining the insects that touch them.1 

You will readily conceive that the geometrical spiders, in forming their 
concentric circled nets, follow a process very different from that just 
described, than which, indeed, it is in many respects more curious. As . 
the net is usually fixed in a perpendicular or somewhat oblique direction, 
in an opening between the leaves of some shrub or plant, it is obvious 
that round its whole extent will be required lines to which can be attached 
those ends of the radii that are furthest from the centre. Accordingly the 
construction of these exterior lines is the spider’s first operation. She 
seems careless about the shape of the area which they enclose, well aware 
that she can as readily inscribe a circle in a triangle as in a square, 
and in this respect she is guided by the distance or proximity of 
the points to which she can attach them.? She spares no pains, however, 
to strengthen and keep them in a proper degree of tension. With the 
former view she composes each line of five or six or even more threads 
glued together; and with the latter she fixes to them from different points 
a numerous and intricate apparatus of smaller threads. Having thus com- 


1 Linn. Trans. xvi. 472. aud xviii. 223. According to M. Walckenaer’s arrangement, 
the genus Clubiona comes under his division of Errantes, or Wanderers, but certainly C. 
atrox, which, since my attention was directed to it by Mr. Blackwall’s very interesting 
account of its economy as above, J have very frequently observed in its natural abode and 
in glasses in which I have kept it, ranges better under his Sédentairis or Sedentary Spiders, 
as I have placed it, as I do not believe that it ever stirs from its nest until summoned by the 
vibrations of its net extended round the opening; and this net, though more irregular in its 
structure, is as truly a net as those of Epeira, I may here mention respecting this species 
two facts not noticed by Mr. Blackwall, that it bas not the power of climbing up a vertical 
surface of glass; and that, however old and dusty its main net may be, the pale blue curled 
or looped fasciculi seem very often renewed, as a pocket-lens rarely fails to detect them in a 
recent state. 

? It sometimes happens that the end of the lower line of the triangle in which the geo- 
metric spiders usually fix their nets, having been attached to a small pebble (or bit of gravel) 
lying on the ground, this pebble (probably from the spider’s tightening its borizontal lines) 
is drawn up to a considerable height, and swings like a pendulum, as I saw many instances, 
at first, to my no small surprise, in the Giardino Publico of Milan in 1832 (vide Spence in 
Loudon’s Mag. of Nat. Hist. v. 689.) ; and as has since been observed by W. W. Saunders, 
Esq. at Wandsworth. (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 127.) In an American newspaper, the 
Lowell Courier. was an account of a watchmaker having found one morning a gold ring 
weighing twelve grains, which he had left on his bench, suspended an inch high to a spider’s 
thread, by which in the course of a week it was elevated eight inches. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 267 


pleted the foundations of her snare!, she proceeds to fill up the outline. 
Attaching a thread to one of the main lines, she walks along it, guiding it 
with one of her hind feet that it may not touch in any part and be prema- 
turely glued, and crosses over to the opposite side, where, by applying 
her spinners, she firmly fixes it. ‘To the middle of this diagonal thread, 
which is to form the centre of her net, she fixes a second, which in like 
manner she conveys and fastens to another part of the lines encircling 
the area. Her work now proceeds rapidly. During the preliminary 
operations she sometimes rests, as though her plan required meditation. 
But no sooner are the marginal lines of her net firmly stretched, and two 
or three radii spun from its centre, than she continues her labor so quickly 
and unremittingly that the eye can scarcely follow her progress. The 
radii, to the number of about twenty, giving the net the appearance of a 
wheel, are speedily finished. She then proceeds to the centre, quickly 
turns herself round, and pulls each thread with her feet to ascertain its 
strength, breaking any one that seems defective and replacing it by another. 
Next, she glues immediately round the centre five or six small concentric 
circles, distant about half a line from each other, and then four or five 
larger ones, each separated by a space of half an inch or more. These 
last serve as a sort of temporary scaffolding to walk over, and to keep the 
radii properly stretched while she glues to them the concentric circles that 
are to remain, which she now proceeds to construct. Placing herself at 
the circumference, and fastening her thread to the end of one of the radii, 
she walks up that one, towards the centre, to such a distance as to draw 
the thread from her body of a sufficient length to reach the next; then 
stepping across and conducting the thread with one of her hind feet, she 
glues it with her spinners to the point in the adjoining radius to which it is 
to be fixed. ‘This process she repeats until she has filled up nearly the 
whole space from the circumference to the centre with concentric circles, 
distant from each other about two lines. She always, however, leaves a 
vacant interval around the smallest first spun circles that are nearest to 
the centre, but for what end I am unable to conjecture. Lastly, she runs 
to the centre and bites away the small cotton-like tuft that united all the 
radii, which being now held together by the circular threads, have thus 
probably their elasticity increased; and in the circular opening resulting 
from this procedure, she takes her station and watches for her prey.” 


1 | am not certain whether the garden spider does not more frequently form one or two of 
the principal radii of the net, before she spins the exterior lines. 

® Mr. Blackwall, in his valuable paper “ On the Manner in which the Geometric Spiders 
construct their Nets,” in the Zoological Journal, vol. v. p. 181., has remarked that the 
above description is not applicable throughout to all geometric spiders, as some of them do 
not entirely surround the radii of their nets with concentric circles, but leave one radius 
free, which serves as a sort of ladder for access to the net; and as in general they do not 
bite away the small cotton-like tuft that unites the radii in the centre, nor place themselves 
there to watch their prey, but retire under a leaf or other shelter, and there construct a cell 
in which the spider remains concealed till the vibrations of a strong line of communication, 
composed of several un'ted threads, which she has spun from the centre of the net to her 
cell, inform her of the capture of a fly, to which she then rushes along this bridge. This 
criticism as to the too extensive generalization of the procedures of the garden spider above 
described is perfectly just, as my own observations since the publication of the last edition 
of this work, but long before I had seen Mr. Blackwall’s paper, had shown me. My ex- 
cuse must be that the observatians above recorded (which are left precisely as originally 
written about the year 1812), having been made on the spur of the occasion in my garden 
at Drypool near Hall, when to my surprise I could not find in books any mtelligible ac- 
count of the way in which the geometric spiders construct their nets, were necessarily con- 


268 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


In the above description, which is from my own observations, 4 haye 
supposed the spider to fix the first and main line of her net to points from 
one of which she could readily climb to the other, dragging it after her ; 
and many of these nets are placed in situations where this is very prac- 
ticable. They are frequently, however, stretched in places where it is 
quite impossible for the spider thus to convey her main line—between the 
branches of lofty trees having no connection with each other; between 
two distinct and elevated buildings; and even between plants growing in 
water. Here then a difficulty occurs. How does the spider contrive to 
extend her main line, which is often many feet in length, acro:s inacces- 
sible openings of this description ? 

With the view of deciding this question, to which I could find no very 
satisfactory answer in books, [ made an experiment, for the idea of which 
I am indebted to a similar one recorded by Mr. Knight!, who informs us 
that if aspider be placed upon an upright stick having its bottom immersed 
in water, it will, after trying in vain all other modes of escape, dart out 
numerous fine threads so light as to float in the air, some one of which 
attaching itself toa neighboring object, furnishes a bridge for its escape. 
It was clear that if this mode is pursued by the geometric spiders, it 
would go considerably towards furnishing a solution of the difficulty in 
question. Laccordingly placed the large diadem spider (Epeira Diadema) 
upon a stick about a foot long, set upright in a vessel containing water. 
After fastening its thread (as all spiders do before they move) at the 
top of the stick, it crept down the side until it felt the water with its 
fore feet, which seem to serve as antenne: it then immediately swung 
itself from the stick (which was slightly bent) and climbed up by the 
thread to the top. This it repeated perhaps a score times, sometimes 
creeping down a different part of the stick, but more frequently down the 
very side it had so often traversed in vain. Wearied with this sameness 
in its operations, I left the room for some hours. On my return I was 
surprised to find my prisoner escaped, and not a little pleased to discover, 
on further examination, a thread extended from the top of the stick to a 
cabinet seven or eight inches distant, which thread had doubtless served 
as its bridge. Eager to witness the process by which the line was con- 
structed, I replaced the spider in its former position. After frequently 
creeping down and mounting up again as before, at length it let itself 
drop from the top of the stick, not as before by a single thread, but by 
two, each distant from the other about the twelfth of an inch, guided as 
usual by one of its hind feet, and one apparently smaller than the other. 
When it had suffered itself to descend nearly to the surface of the water, 
it stopped short, and, by some means which I could not distinctly see, 
broke off close to the spinners the smallest thread, which, still adhering 
by the other end to the top of the stick, floated in the air, and was so 
light as to be carried about by the slightest breath. On approaching a 


fined to the common garden species alone found there, and my attention having been sub- 
sequently fully ocenpied in otlLer directions, it did not occur to me that probably the opera- 
tions of other species might differ from those I had witnessed. These variations, however, 
do not affect the accuracy of the description above given of the procedures of the species 
referred to, one of the commonest of the tribe, which description also, except in the two 
particulars above stated, is generally applicable to the whole geometric race, and has been in 
great part adopted by Mr. Blackwall in his more full detail of their operations. 
1 Treatise on the Apple and Pear, p. 97. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 269 


pencil to the loose end of this line, it did not adhere from mere contact. 
I therefore twisted it once or twice round the pencil, and then drew it 
tight. The spider, which had previously climbed to the top of the stick, 
immediately pulled at it with one of its feet, and, finding it sufficiently 
tense, crept along it, strengthening it as it proceeded by another thread, 
and thus reached the pencil. 

That this therefore is one mode by which the geometric spiders convey 
the main line of their nets between distant objects, there can be no doubt, 
but that it is the only one is not so clear. If the position of the main 
line be thus determined by the accidental influence of the wind, we might 
expect to see these nets arranged with great irregularity, and crossing 
each other in every direction; yet it is the fact, that however closely 
crowded they may be, they constantly appear to be placed not by acci- 
dent but design, commonly running parallel with each other at right angles 
with the points of support, and never interfering. Another objection too 
presents itself. From the experiment related, it is clear that the main line 
of the net can never be longer than the height of the object from which 
the spider dropped in forming it. But it is no uncommon thing to see nets 
in which these lines are a yard or two long fastened to twigs of grass not 
a foot in height, and yet separated by obstacles effectually precluding the 
possibility of the spiders having dragged the lines from one to the other. 
Here, therefore, some other process must have been used. 

Both these difficulties would be removed by adopting the explanation 
of an anonymous author in the Journal de Physique? founded, as he 
asserts, on actual observation. He says that he saw a small spider, which 
he had forced to suspend itself by its thread from the point of a feather, 
shoot out obliquely in opposite directions other smaller threads, which 
attached themselves in the still air of a room, without any influence of the 
wind, to the objects towards which they were directed. He, therefore, 
infers that spiders have the power of shooting out threads and directing 
them at pleasure towards a determined point, judging of the distance and 
position of the object by some sense of which we are ignorant. Something 
like this manceuvre I once myself witnessed in a male of the small garden 
spider (Epetra? reticulata). It was standing midway on a long perpendicu- 
lar fixed thread, and an appearance caught my eye of what seemed to be the 
emission of threads from its projected spinners. I therefore moved my 
arm in the direction in which they apparently proceeded, and, as I sus- 
pected, a floating thread attached itself to my coat, along which the 
spider crept. As this was connected with the spinners of the spider, it 
could not have been formed in the same way with the secondary thread of 
E. Diadema above described. 


1 Sometime after making this experiment I stumbled upon a passage in Redi ( De Insectis, 
p- 119.), from which it appears that Blancanus, in his Commentaries upon Aristotle, has 
related a series of observations which led him to precisely the same result. Lehmann, too, 
in a paper in the Transactions of the Society of Naturalists at Berlin (translated in the Phi- 
losophical Magazine, xi. 323.) has given an explanation somewhat similar of the operations 
of this very spider, but I am inclined to think erroneous in some particulars. He describes 
it as emitting mwmerous floating threads at the commencement of its descent. That he is mis- 
taken in supposing these threads to be more than one, is proved by the fact which I have 
observed—that even that one sometimes breaks by the weight of the spider. How then 
could an insect almost as big as a gooseberry be supported by a line of the tenuity here 
attributed to it ? 

2 An. vii. Vindémiaire. Translated in Phil. Mag. ii. 275. 


93* 


270 FOOD OF INSECTS. . 


Probably in this case, as in so many others, we bewilder ourselves by 
attempting to make nature bend to generalities to Which she disdains to 
submit. Different spiders may lay the foundations of their net in a diffe- 
rent manner; some on the plan adopted by E. Diadema; others, as 
Lister long ago conjectured', by shooting out threads in the mode of the 
flying species, as in the instances recorded by the anonymous observer, 
and Mr. Knight. Nor is it improbable that the same species has the power 
of varying its procedures according to circumstances. 

How far these suppositions are correct it is impossible to determine 
without further experiments, which it is somewhat strange should not 
before now have been instituted. Pliny thought it nothing to the eredit 
of the philosophers of his day, that while they were disputing about the 
number of heroes of the name of Hercules, and the site of the sepulchre 
of Bacchus, they should not have decided whether the queen bee had a 
sting or not”; but it seems much more discreditable to the entomologists 
of ours, that they should yet be ignorant how the geometric spiders fix 
their nets. One excuse for them is, that these insects generally begin 
their operations in the night, so that, though it is very easy to see them 
spinning their concentric circles, it is seldom that they can be caught 
laying the foundations of their snares. Yet doubtless the lucky moment 
might be hit by an attentive observer, and I shall be glad if my attempt to 
describe their more ordinary operations should induce you to aim at 
signalizing yourself by the discovery. If you failed in solving every diffi- 
culty, you would at least be rewarded by witnessing their industry, inge- 
nuity, and patience. 

For the latter virtue they have no small occasion. Incapable of actively 
pursuing their prey, they are dependent upon what chance conducts into 
their toils, which, especially those spread in neglected buildings, often 
remain for a long period empty. Even the geometrical spiders, which fix 
themselves in the midst of a well-peopled district in the open air, have 
frequently to sustain a protracted abstinence. A continued storm of wind 
and rain will demolish their nets, and preclude the possibility of recon- 
structing them for many days or sometimes weeks, during which not even 
a single gnat regales their sharp-set appetites. And when at length 
formed anew or repaired, an unlucky bee or wasp, or an overgrown fly, 
will perversely entangle itself in toils not intended for insects of its bulk, 
and in disengaging itself once more leave the net in ruin. All these trials 
move not our philosophic race. They patiently sit in their watching place 
in the same posture, scarcely ever stirring but when the expected prey 
appears. And however repeatedly their nets are injured or destroyed, as 
long as their store of silk is unexhausted, they repair or reconstruct them 
without loss of time. 

The web of a house-spider will, with occasional repairs, serve for a 
considerable period ; but the nets of the geometric spiders are in favorable 
weather renewed either wholly, or at least their concentric circles, every 
twenty-four hours, even when not apparently injured. This difference 
in the operations of the two tribes depends upon a very remarkable pecu- 
liarity in the conformation of their snares. The threads of the house- 
spider’s web are all of the same kind of silk; and flies are caught in them 


1 Mist. Anim. Ang. p. 7. 2 Plin. Hist, Nat. 1. xi. c. 17. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 271 


from their claws becoming entangled in the fine meshes which form the 
texture. On the other hand, the net of the garden spider is composed of 
two distinct kinds of silk; that of the radii not adhesive, that of the circles 
extremely viscid.'. The cause of this difference, which, when it is con- 
sidered that both sorts of silk proceed from the same instrument, is truly 
wonderful, may be readily perceived. If you examine a newly formed 
net with a microscope, you will find that the threads composing the outline 
and the radii are simple, those of the circles closely studded with minute 
dew-like globules, which, from the elasticity of the thread, are easily sepa- 
rable from each other. That these are in fact globules of viscid gum, is 
proved by their adhering to the finger and retaining dust thrown upon the 
net, while the unadhesive radii and exterior threads remain unsoiled. It 
is these gummed threads alone which retain the insects that fly into 
the net; and as they lose their viscid propeties by the action or the air, it 
is necessary that they should be frequently renewed.” 


1 May not the spinners mentioned by Leeuwenhoek be peculiar to the retiary spiders, 
and furnish this viscid thread ? 

2 The accuracy of the fact above stated as to the essential difference between the radii 
and concentric circles from the presence of globules of gum on the latter only has been 
denied by the author of - Insect Architecture ; butas it has been fully confirmed by Mr. 
Blackwall, and as any one, who will examine a newly-made spider’s net with a common 
pocket lens, and throw a little dust on it, will see for himself what is here described, it is 
needless to refute an error that has most probably arisen from the examination of old nets, 
which, after being exposed to wind and rain, often lose the globules of gum from the 
circles. (Vide Spence in Loudon’s Mag. of Nat. Hist. 1832, vol. v. p. 689.) 

When the writer of these letters on the food of insects, in examining for himself the 
whole process, from first to last, of the construction of the nets of the garden geometric 
spider, observed this remarkable difference between the radii and concentric circles, he had 
certainly no idea that he had made any discovery, as he never dreamed that so obvious a 
peculiarity in objects so constantly in view had not been very frequently noticed, and even 
described, in books, though he had not himself chanced to meet with any such description. 
But the denial of the fact itself having subsequently drawn his attention to the subject, he 
is inclined to believe (but without speaking positively on a question which he has not now 
an opportunity of investigating) that the existence of these gum globules and their pecu- 
liar object were first distinctly made known in the present work*; a circumstance, which, 
if the fact prove to have heen so, deserves being held out to the young entomologist in proof 
how wide a field of discovery must yet remain to be explored, when points at once so curi- 
ous and yet obvious in the economy of a spider, found in every garden, had so long re- 
mained unnoticed. 

Another reason for directing attention to this fact is to recommend strongly to compara- 
tive anatomists and microscopical observers an investigation of the mode in which the geo- 
metric spiders are enabled to spin two different kinds of silk, one gummy and the other not, 
and whether the spinners noticed by Leeuwenhoek, as suggested in a preceding note, are 
concerned in the process—points to which Mr. Blackwall, in his examination of the spin- 
ning apparatus of spiders (Linn. Trans. xviii. 219.), has not adverted. It is obvious that 
these spiders must either have two distinct sets of Spinners, of which one spins the gummy 
and the other the unadhesive threads, or else, if all the threads proceed from the same 
spinners, the spider must have the means of passing the threads of the concenjric circles 
through a reservoir of gum so as to stud them with the globules of this substance which 
give them their fly-catching viscidity. There is, however, a considerable difficulty in the 
way of this last supposition, for as the threads at their issuing from the spinners are, as has 
been already explained, so numerous, it is not easy to conceive how, after being united 
into one, they can be passed through any gum reservoir, nor how, if they were so passed, the 


* Dr. Hooke, indeed, in a passage in his Micrographia, p. 202., quoted by Mr. Black- 
wall (Linn. Trans. xvi. 479.), speaks of the radii of geometric spiders’ nests being “all 
over knotted or pearled with small transparent globules, not unlike small crystal beads or 
seed-pearls strung on a clew of silk ;” but, as he immediately adds, ‘“‘ which, whether they 
were so spun by the spider or by the adventitious moisture of a fog (which I have observed 
to cover all these filaments with such crystalline beads), I shall not now dispute ;’’ it is 
clear that he had no distinct or correct ideas as to the origin of these globules, nor the 
slighest conception of their use. 


272 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


In this renewal, as above hinted, the geometrical spiders are constantly 
regulated by the future probable state of the atmosphere, of which they 
have such a nice perception, that M. Q. D’Isjonval, to whom we are 
indebted for the fact, has proposed them as most accurate barometers. 
He asserts that if the weather be about to be variable, wet and stormy, 
the main threads which support the net will be certainly short; but if 
fine settled weather be on the point of commencing, these threads will be 
as invariably very long.’ Without going the length, with M. D’Isjonval, 
of deeming his discoveries important enough to regulate the march of 
armies, or the sailing of fleets, or of proposing that the first appearance of 
these barometrical spiders in spring should be announced by the sound of 
trumpet, I have reason to suppose from my own observations that his 
statements are in the main accurate, and that a very good idea of the 
weather may be formed from attending to these insects. 

The spiders which form geometrical nets differ from the weavers also 
with respect to the situation in which they watch for their prey. They 
do not conceal themselves under their net, but either place themselves in 
the centre with their head downwards, and retire to a little apartment 
formed on one side under some leaf of a plant, only when obliged by 
danger or the state of the weather, or, as before stated, constantly hide 
themselves in a similar retreat. ‘The moment an unfortunate fly or other 
insect touches the net, the spider rushes towards it, seizes it with her fangs, 
and if it be a small species at once carries it to her little cell, and, having 
there at leisure sucked its juices, throws out the carcass. If the insect 
be larger and struggle to escape, with surprising address she envelops it 
with threads in various directions, until both its wings and legs being effect- 
ually fastened, she carries it off to her den. If the captured insect be a 
bee, or a large fly so strong that the spider is sensible that it is more than 
a match for her, she never attempts to seize or even entangle it, but on 
the contrary assists it to disengage itself, and often breaks off that part 
of the net to which it hangs, content to be rid of such an unmanageable 
intruder at any price—When larger booty is plentiful, these spiders seem 
not to regard smaller insects. I have observed them in autumn, when 
their nets were almost covered with the Aphides which filled the air 
impatiently pulling them off and dropping them untouched over the sides, 
as though irritated that their meshes should be occupied with such insignifi- 


gum, instead of being applied to the entire surface of the threads, should come to be divid- 
ed in the process into distinct and bead-like globules. The subject is certainly highly 
curious and interesting, and well deserves investigation for an additional reason originally 
noticed above and confirmed by Mr. Blackwall, that the circular lines differ from the radii 
and main lines of the net, not only in being studded with gum globules, but in being far 
more elastic, which elasticity (as well as the viscidity of the gum globules) he found re- 
mained unimpaired far more than seven months ina net of Epetra diademo constructed in a 
glass jar which was placed in a dark closet. (Linn. Trans. xvi. 479.) 

Before concluding this long note, an omission in the account of the geometric spiders’ 
forming their nets, in the text, which has been supplied by Mr. Blackwall, should be given, 
namely, that in the process of spinning the concentric gummy circles, the spider, as she 

roceeds, destroys the first made distant unadhesive circles which had served her as a scaf- 
‘olding in placing the former. (Zool. Journ. v. 183.) A curious calculation, also, of Mr. 
Blackwall’s, as to the number of distinct globules of gum in a geometric spider’s net, 
should be noticed. These he found to be 87,360 in a net of average dimensions, and 
120,000 in a large net of fourteen or sixteen inches diameter; and yet Eperia apoclysa will, 
if uninterrupted, complete its snare on an average in forty minutes. (p. 478.) 
1 Brez, La Flore des Insectophiles, 129. 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 273 


cant game.—A species of spider described by Lister (Epeira conica) 
more provident than its brethren, suspends its prey in the meshes above 
and below the centre, and it is not uncommon to see its larder thus stored 
with several flies. 

You must not infer that the toils of spiders are in every part of the 
world formed of such fragile materials as those which we are accustomed 
to see, or that they are every where contented with small insects for théir 
food. An author in the Philosophical Transactions asserts, that the 
spiders of Bermudas spin webs between trees seven and eight fathoms 
distant, which are strong enough to ensnare a bird as large as a thrush.? 
And Sir G. Staunton informs us, that in the forests of Java, spiders’ webs 
are met with of so stronga texture as to require a sharp cutting instrument 
to make way through them.® The nets of a large geometric spider, 
Nephila (Epeira) clavipes, are sufficiently strong to arrest and entangle 
the smaller species of humming-birds ; but Mr. W. S. MacLeay, in whose 
garden at Cuba these nests abounded, never saw or heard of any birds 
being caught in them.* On the other hand, however, he observed in the 
grounds of Elizabeth Bay, near Sydney (Australia), in the beginning of 
1840, a young bird (Zosterops dorsalis), which had been apparently dead 
some days, suspended in the geometrical net of an enormous undescribed 
spider of the same family (Epeiride), which was in the act of sucking its 
juices ; and his father, Alexander MacLeay, Esq., informed him that he 
had also been witness to a similar occurrence ; but he considers these facts 
as exceptions to the general rule of this spider’s insectivorous habits and 
to be of rare occurrence, since, as far as he could learn, no other persons 
had observed them.° 

Nor must you suppose that all the spiders of this country which catch 
their prey by means of snares follow the same plan in constructing them 
as the weavers and geometricians whose operations I have endeavored to 
describe. The form of their snares and the situation in which they place 
them are so various, that it is impossible to enumerate more than a few of 
the most remarkable. -Agelene labyrinthica extends over the blades of 
grass a large white horizontal net, having at its margin a cylindrical cell, 
in the bottom of which, secure from birds and defended from the rays of 
the sun, the spider lies concealed, whence, on the slightest movement of 
her net, she rushes out upon her prey. -Aranea latens F. conceals itself 
under a small net spun upon the upper surface of a leaf, and thence 
seizes upon any insect that chances to pass over it. Theridium 13-gat- 
tatum forms under stones and in slight furrows in the ground a net consist- 
ing of threads spun without any regularity in all directions, but so strong 
as to entrap grasshoppers, which are said to be its principal food ; and a 
similar inartificial snare of simple threads is often spun in windows by 
Theridium bipunctatum and several other species. Segestria senoculata 
and its affinities conceal themselves in a long cylindrical straight silken 
tube, from the mouth of which they stretch out their six anterior feet, 
whose extremities rest upon as many diverging threads: thus, as soon as 
an insect walks across any of the threads (which are eight or ten inches 


1 Lister, Hist. Anim. Ang. 32, tit. 4. 
* Phil. Tr. 1668, p. 792. _ 3 Embassy to China, i, 343. 
* Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond. i. 193. 5 Ann. Nat. Hist. viii, 324. 


274 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


long) the insect’s toes give it warning of prey being at hand, when it 
rushes out and seldom fails to secure its victim. © 


“ The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine! 
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.’ 


M. Hombers tells us that he has seen a vigorous wasp carried off and 
destroyed by one of these species. 


The spiders to which I have hitherto adverted seize their prey by means 
of webs or nets; but a very large number, though, like the former, they 
spin silken cocoons for containing their eggs, and often line their cells and 
places of retreat with silk, never employ the same material in constructing 
similar snares, of which they make no use. 

These may be separated into two grand divisions: the first comprising 
those which conceal themselves and lie in ambuscade for their prey, and 
sometimes run after it a short distance ; the second, those which are con- 
stantly roaming about in every direction in search of it, and seize it by 
open violence. The former Walckenaer, in his admirable work on spiders, 
has designated by the name of Vagrants, the latter by that of Hunters ; 
terming those already mentioned which spin webs and nets, Sedentaries : 
if to these you add the Swimmers, or those species which catch their prey 
in the water, you will have an idea of the general manners of the whole 
race of spiders.’ 

The artificers of that tribe which Walckenaer has named vagrants are 
various and singular. Several species conceal themselves in a little cell 
formed of the rolled up leaf of a plant, and thence dart upon any insect 
which chances to pass; while others select for their place of ambush a 
hole in a wall, or lurk behind a stone, or in the bark of a tree. -Aranea 
calycina L. more ingeniously places herself at the bottom of the calyx of 
a dead flower, and pounces upon the unwary flies that come in search of 
honey ; and A. arundinacea buries herself in the thick panicle of a reed, 
and seizes the luckless visiters enticed to rest upon her silvery concealment. 
Many of this tribe at times quit their habitations, and by various stratagems 
contrive to come within reach of their prey, as by pretending to be dead, 
hiding themselves behind any slight projection, &c. A white species 1 
have often observed squatted in the blossom of the hawthorn or on the 
flowers of umbeliferous plants, and is thus effectually concealed by the 
similarity of color. 

Foremost amongst the spiders comprehended by Walckenaer under the 
general name of hunters, which search after and openly seize their prey, 
must be enumerated the monstrous Mygale avicularia, at least two inches 
long, and the expansion of whose feet has been sometimes found to extend 
nearly a foot wide, which takes up its abode in the woods of South 
America, and has been reputed by Madame Merian to seize and devour 
even small birds ; but this is wholly denied by Langsdorf, who declares 
that it eats only insects”; a conclusion which is confirmed by Mr. W. 8. 
MacLeay from his own observations on this species, which was very com- 
mon in his garden in Cuba, and did him great service by devouring the 


1 Some stight alterations in M. Walckenaer’s original divisions, but which need not be 
here particularized, have been made in his later works on spiders. 
2 Bermerkungen auf einer Reise um die Welt. i, 63, 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 275 


Juli, Achete, cockroaches, &c., which are so injurious there to cultivated 
vegetables. It issues from its hole at night only (never in the day time) 
to attack these insects ; and so far from having any bird-catching propen- 
sities, Mr. MacLeay having placed a living humming-bird in the tube of 
a Mygale, it deserted it, leaving the bird untouched.’ It is, however, 
very possible that other species may attack birds, as is asserted of Mygale 
Blondii by Palisot de Beauvais, of M. fasciata by Percival in his Account 
of Ceylon, and of a species common in Martinique by M. Moreau de 
Jonnés.2 Mygale avicularia, as well as other tropical species, the Euro- 
pean Cteniza cementaria, and many others, construct in the ground very 
singular cylindrical cavities, and therein carry and devour their prey. 
These, being rather the habitations of insects than snares, I shall describe 
in a subsequent letter. Lycosa saccata, the species whose affection for 
its young I have before detailed, and not a few others of the same family, 
common in this country, in like manner seize their prey openly, and when 
caught carry it to little inartificial cavities under stones. Dolomedes fim- 
briatus*? hunts along the margins of pools; and Lycosa piratica and its 
congeners not only chase their prey in the same situation, but, venturing to 
skate upon the surface of the water itself, 
“, , . bathe unwet their oily forms, and dwell 
With feet repulsive on the dimpling well.” 

The Rev. R. Sheppard has often noticed, in the fen ditches of Norfolk, 
a very large spider, which actually forms a raft for the purpose of obtain- 
ing its prey with more facility. Keeping its station upon a ball of weeds 
about three inches in diameter, probably held together by slight silken 
cords, it is wafted along the surface of the water upon this floating island, 
which it quits the moment it sees a drowning insect,—not, as you may 
conceive, for the sake of applying to it the process of the Humane Society, 
but of hastening its exit by a more speedy engine of destruction. The 
booty thus seized it devours at leisure upon its raft, under which it retires 
when alarmed by any danger. 

The last of the tribe of hunters that it is necessary to particularize are 
those which, like the tigers amongst the larger animals, seize their victims 
by leaping upon them. ‘To this division belongs a very pretty small 
banded species, Salticus scenicus, which in summer may be seen running 
on every wall. 

To Walckenaer’s swimmers, the last of his grand tribes of spiders, 
including the single genus and species, Argyroneta aquatica, the first line 
of the above quotation from Dr. Darwin is particularly applicable ; for 
these actually seize their food by diving under the water, their bodies being 
kept unwet by a coating of air which constantly surrounds them.—Thus 
one single race of insects exemplify in miniature almost all the modes of 
obtaining food which prevail amongst predaceous quadrupeds—the auda- 
cious attack of the lion, the wily spring of the tiger, the sedentary cunning 
of the lynx, and the amphibious dexterity of the otter. 

This general view of the stratagems by which the spider tribe obtain 

1 Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond. i. 191. 

2 Shuckard in Ann. of Nat. Hist. viii. 436. 

3 According to M. Walckenaer this spider (Aranea fimbriata L.), A. marginata and A. 


paludosa De Geer ; as well as Dolomedes limbatus Hahn, and D. marginatus of his Faune 
Frangaise, are mere varieties of the same species. (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ii. 424.) 


276 FOOD OF INSECTS. 


their food, imperfect as it is, will, I trust, have interested you sufficiently to 
drive away the associations of disgust with whicheyou, like almost every 
one, have probably been accustomed to regard these insects. Instead of 
considering them as repulsive compounds of cruelty and ferocity, you will 
henceforward see in their procedures only the ingenious contrivances of 
patient and industrious hunters, who, while obeying the great law of nature 
in procuring their sustenance, are actively serviceable to the human race 
in destroying noxious insects. You will allow the poet to stigmatize 
them as 
“|... cunning and fierce, 
Mixture abhorred! ” 

but you will see that these epithets are in reality as unjustly applied to 
them (at least with reference to the mode in which they procure their 
necessary subsistence) as to the patient sportsman who lays snares for the 
birds that are to serve for the dinner of his family ; and when you hear 


“. ,. ... the fluttering wing 
And shriller sound declare extreme distress,” 


you will as little think it the part of true mercy to stretch forth “ the 
helping hospitable hand” to the entrapped fly as to the captive birds. 
The spider requires his meal as well as the Indian: and, however, to our 
weak capacity, the great law of creation “ eat or be eaten”? may seem 
cruel or unnecessary, knowing as we do that it is the ordinance of a 
beneficent Being, who does all things well, and that in fact the sum of 
happiness is greatly augmented by it, no man, who does not let a morbid 
sensibility get the better of his judgment, will, on account of their sub- 
jection to this rule, look upon predaceous animals with abhorrence. 


One more instance of the stratagems of insects in procuring their prey 
shall conclude this letter. Other examples might be adduced, but the 
enumeration would be tedious. This, from an order of insects widely 
differing from that which includes the race of spiders, is perhaps more 
curious and interesting than any of those hitherto recited. ‘The insect to 
which I allude, an inhabitant of the south of Europe, is the larva of a 
species of ant-lion (Myrmeleon), so called from its singular manners in 
this state. It belongs to a genus between the dragon-fly and the Heme- 
robius. When full grown its length is about half an inch: in shape it has 
a slight resemblance to a wood-louse, but the outline of the body is more 
triangular, the anterior part being considerably wider than the posterior: 
it has six legs, and the mouth is furnished with a forceps consisting of 
two incurved jaws, which give ita formidable appearance. If we looked 
only at its external conformation and habits, we should be apt to conclude 
it one of the most helpless animals in the creation. Its sole food is the 
juices of other insects, particularly ants, but at the first view it seems 
impossible that it should ever secure a single meal. Not only is its pace 
slow, but it can walk in no other direction than backwards ; you may 
judge, therefore, what would be such a hunter’s chance of seizing an active 
ant. Nor would a stationary posture be more favorable ; for its grim 
aspect would infallibly impress upon all wanderers the prudence of 
keeping at a respectful distance. What then is to become of our poor 
ant-lion? In its appetite it isa perfect epicure, never, however great may 


FOOD OF INSECTS. Q77 


be its hunger, deigning to taste of a carcass unless it has previously had 
the enjoyment of killing it; and then extracting only the finer juices. In 
what possible way can it contrive to supply such a succession of delicacies, 
when its ordinary habits seem to unfit it for obtaining even the coarsest 
provision? You shall hear. It accomplishes by artifice what all its open 
efforts would have been unequal to. It digs in loose sand a conical pit, 
in the bottom of which it conceals itself, and there seizes upon the inseets 
which, chancing to stumble over the margin, are precipitated down the 
sides to the centre. ‘‘ How wonderful!” you exclaim: but you will be 
still more surprised when I have described the whole process by which 
it excavates its trap, and the ingenious contrivances to which it has 
recourse. 

Its first concern is to find a soil of loose dry sand, in the neighborhood 
of which, indeed, its provident mother has previously taken care to place 
it, and in a sheltered spot near an old wall, or at the foot of a tree. 
This is necessary on two accounts: the prey most acceptable to it 
abounds there, and no other soil would suit for the construction of its 
‘snare. Its next step is to trace in the sand a circle, which, like the 
furrow with which Romulus marked out the limits of his new city, is to 
determine the extent of its future abode. This being done, it proceeds to 
excavate the cavity by throwing out the sand in a mode not less singular 
than effective. Placing itself in the inside of the circle which it has 
traced, it thrusts the hind part of its body under the sand, and with one of 
its fore-legs, serving as a shovel, it charges its flat and square head with a 
load, which it immediately throws over the outside of the circle with a 
jerk strong enough to carry it to the distance of several inches. This 
little manceuvre is executed with surprising promptitude and address. A 
gardener does not operate so quickly or well with his spade and his foot, as 
the ant-lion with its head and Jeg. Walking backwards, and constantly 
repeating the process, it soon arrives at the part of the circle from which 
it set out. It then traces a new one, excavates another furrow in a similar 
manner, and, by a repetition of these operations, at length arrives at the 
centre of its cavity. One circumstance deserves remark,—that it never 
loads its head with the sand lying on the outside of the circle, though it 
would be as easy to do this with the outward leg, as to remove the sand 
within the circle by the inner leg. But it knows that it is the sand in the 
interior of the circle only that is to be excavated, and it therefore con- 
stantly uses the leg next the centre. It will readily occur, however, that 
to use one leg as a shovel exclusively throughout the whole of such a 
toilsome operation, would be extremely wearisome and paintul. For this 
difficulty our ingenious pioneer has a resource. After finishing the exca- 
vation of one circular furrow, it traces the next in an opposite direction ; 
and thus alternately exercises each of its legs without tiring either. 

In the course of its labours it frequently meets with small stones: these 
it places upon its head one by one, and jerks over the margin of the pit. 
But sometimes, when near the bottom, a pebble presents itself of a size 
so large that this process is impossible, its head not being sufficiently broad 
and strong to bear so great a weight, and the height being too considerable 
to admit of projecting so large a body to the top. A more impatient 
laborer would despair, but not so our insect. A new plan is adopted. 


24 


278 FOOD OF INSECTS. 
\ 

By a manceuvre, not easily described, it lifts the stone upon its back, keeps 
it in a steady position by an alternate motion of the"segments which com- 
pose that part; and carefully walking up the ascent with the burthen, 
deposits it on the outside of the margin. When, as occasionally happens,’ 
the stone is round, the labor becomes most difficult and painful. A spec- 
tator watching the motions of the ant-lion feels an inexpressible interest in 
its behalf. He sees it with vast exertion elevate the stone, and begin its 
arduous retrograde ascent: at every moment the burthen totters to one 
side or the other: the adroit porter lifts up the segments of its back to 
balance it, and has already nearly reached the top of the pit, when a 
stumble or a jolt mocks all its efforts, and the stone tumbles headlong to 
the bottom. Mortified, but not despairing, the ant-lion returns to the 
charge; again replaces the stone on its back ; again ascends the side, and 
artfully avails himself, for a road, of the channel formed by the falling 
stone, against the sides of which he can support his load. This time 
possibly he succeeds; or it may be, as is often the case, the stone again 
rolls down. When thus unfortunate, our little Sisyphus has been seen sax 
times patiently to renew his attempt, and was at last, as such heroic reso- 
lution deserved, successful. It is only after a series of trials have demon- 
strated the impossibility of succeeding that our engineer yields to fate, and, 
quitting his half-exeavated pit, begins the formation of another. 

When all obstacles are overcome, and the pit is finished, it presents 
itself as a conical hole rather more than .two inches deep, gradually con- 
tracting to a point at the bottom, and about three inches wide at the top.? 
The ant-lion now takes its station at the bottom of the pit, and, that its 
gruff appearance may not scare the passengers which approach its den, 
covers itself with sand all except the points of its expanded forceps. It 
is not long before an ant on its travels, fearing no harm, steps upon the 
margin of the pit, either accidentally or for the purpose of exploring the 
depth below. Alas! its curiosity is dearly gratified. The faithless sand 
slides from under its feet ; its struggles but hasten its descent; and it is 
precipitated headlong into the jaws of the concealed devourer. Some- 
times, however, it chances that the ant is able to stop itself midway, and 
with all haste scrambles up again. No sooner does the ant-lion perceive 
this (for, being furnished with six eyes on each side of his head, he is 
sufficiently sharp-sighted), then shaking off his inactivity, he hastily 
shovels loads of sand upon his head, and vigorously throws them up in 
quick succession upon the escaping insect, which, attacked by such a 
heavy shower from below and treading on so unstable a path, is almost 
inevitably carried to the bottom. ‘The instant his victim is fairly within 
reach, the ant-lion seizes him between his jaws, which are admirable 
instruments, at the same time hooked for holding, and grooved on the 
inner side, so as to form with the adjoining maxille, which move up and 
down in the groove, a tube for sucking, and at his leisure extracting all 
the juices of the body, regales upon formic acid. The dry carcass he 
subsequently jerks out of his den, that it may not encumber him in his 


? The nests of this animal which I saw at Fontainebleau (in the pit producing the fossil 
named after that place) were scarcely half the dimensions here given, but they mig 
probably be younger insects. I kept one in a box of sand several days, in which it rega- 
larly formed its pit, whenever obliterated by shaking. The bottom of the box unfortunately” 
came out as I was upon my return to England, and the animal was killed. - 


FOOD OF INSECTS. 279 


future contests, or betray the “horrid secrets of his prison-house :” and 
if the sides of the pit have received any damage, he leaves his con- 
cealment for awhile to repair it; which having done he resumes his 
station. 

In this manner in its larva state this insect lives nearly two years, during 
all which time it receives no food but what has been caught through the 
artifice above described. Though all living insects, for I have fed it with 
flies, are equally acceptable to it, as the winged tribe can easily take flight 
from its pit should they chance to fall into it, its prey consists chiefly of 
apterous species, of which ants form by far the largest portion, with 
occasionally an unwary spider or wood-louse. When the full period of 
its growth is attained it retires under the sand ; spins with its anus a silken 
cocoon ; remains a chrysalis a few weeks ; and then breaks forth a four- 
winged insect, resembling, as before observed, the dragon-fly both in 
appearance and manners, and preying, in like manner, on moths, butter- 
flies, and other insects.! 

The larva of Myrmeleon Formicaleo is not the only insect which avails 
itself of a trap for obtaining its prey. A plan in most respects similar is 
adopted by that of a fly (Leptis Vermileo), in form somewhat resembling 
the common flesh maggot. This also digs a funnel-shaped cavity in Joose 
earth or sand, but deeper in proportion to its width than that of M. For- 
micaleo, and excavated not by regular circles, but by throwing out the 
earth obliquely on all sides. When its trap is finished, it stretches itself 
near the bottom, remaining stiff and without motion like a piece of wood, 
and the last segment bent at an angle with the rest, so as to form a strong 
point of support in the struggles which it often necessarily has with vigor- 
ous prey. “I'he moment an insect falls into the pitfall, the larva writhes 
itself round it like a serpent, transfixes it with its mandibles, and sucks its 
juices at its ease. If the insect escapes, the larva casts above it jets of 
sand with surprising rapidity.? 

Iam, &c. 


1 Reaum, vi. 333—378. Bonnet, ii. 380. 
? Bonnet, ix. 414. De Geer, vi. 168. 1. 10. 


280 


LETTER XIV. 
HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


In forming an estimate of the civilization and intellectual progress of a 
newly discovered people, we usually pay attention to their buildings, and 
other proofs of architectural skill. If we find them, like the wretched 
inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, without other abodes than natural 
caverns or miserable penthouses of bark, we at once regard them as the 
most ignorant and unhumanized of their race. If, like the natives of the 
South Sea Isles, they have advanced a step further, and enjoy houses 
formed of timber, thatched with leaves, and furnished with utensils of 
different kinds, we are inclined to place them considerably higher in the 
scale. When, as in the case of ancient Mexico, we discover a nation 
inhabiting towns, containing stone houses, regularly disposed into streets, 
we do not hesitate without other inquiry to decide that it must have been 
civilized in no ordinary degree. And if it were to chance that some 
future Park in Africa should stumble upon the ruins of a large city, 
where, in addition to these proofs of science, every building was con- 
structed on just geometrical and architectural principles; where the 
materials were so employed as to unite strength with lightness, and a con- 
fined site so artfully occupied as to obtain spacious symmetrical apart- 
ments, we should eagerly inquire into the history of the inhabitants, and 
sigh over the remains of a race whose intellectual advances we should 
infer with certainty were not inferior to our own. 

Were we by the same test to estimate the sagacity of the different 
classes of animals, we should, beyond all doubt, assign the highest place 
to insects, which, in the construction of their habitations, leave all the rest 
far behind. ‘The nests of birds, from the rook’s rude assemblage of sticks 
to the pensile dwellings of the tailor bird, wonderful as they doubtless are, 
are indisputably eclipsed by the structures formed by many insects ; and 
the regular villages of the beaver, by far the most sagacious architect 
amongst quadrupeds, must yield the palm to a wasp’s nest. You will 
think me here guilty of exaggeration, and that, blinded by my attach- 
ment to a favorite pursuit, 1 am elevating the little objects, which I wish 
to recommend to your study, to a rank beyond their just claim. So far, 
however, am [ from being conscious of any such prejudice, that I do not 
hesitate to go further, and assert that the pyramids of Egypt, as the work 
of man, are not more wonderful for their size and solidity than are the 
structures built by some insects. 

To describe the most remarkable of these is my present object: and 
that some method may be observed, I shall in this letter describe the habi- 
tations of insects living in a state of solitude, and built each by a single 
architect; and in a subsequent one, those of insects living in societies, 
built by the united labors of many. The former class may be conve- 
niently subdivided into habitations built by the parent insect, not for its 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 281 


own use, but for the convenience of its future young; and those which 
are formed by the insect that inhabits them for its own accommodation. 
To the first I shall now call your attention. 


The solitary insects which construct habitations for their future young 
without any view to their own accommodation, chiefly belong to the order 
Hymenoptera, and are principally different species of wild bees and wasps. 
Of these the most simple are built by Colletes' succincta, fodiens, &c. 
The situation which the parent bee chooses, is either the dry earth of a 
bank, or the vacuities of stone walls cemented with earth instead of 
mortar. Having excavated a cylinder about two inches in depth, running 
usually in a horizontal direction, the bee occupies it with three or four 
cells about half an inch long, and one sixth broad, shaped like a thimble, 
the end of one fitting into the mouth of another. The substance of which 
these cells are formed is two or three layers of a silky membrane, com- 
posed of a kind of glue secreted by the animal, resembling gold-beater’s 
leaf, but much finer, and so thin and transparent that the color of an 
included object may be seen through them. As soon as one cell is com- 
pleted, the bee deposits an egg within, and nearly fills it with a paste 
composed of pollen and honey ; which having done, she proceeds to form 
another cell, storing it in like manner until the whole is finished, when she 
carefully stops up the mouth of the orifice with earth. Our countryman 
Grew seems to have found a series of these nests in a singular situation— 
the middle of the pith of an old elder branch—in which they were placed 
lengthwise one after another with a thin boundary between each.® 

Cells composed of a similar membranaceous substance, but placed in a 
different situation, are constructed by Anthidiwm manicatum. This gay 
insect does not excavate holes for their reception, but places them in the 
cavities of old trees, or of any other object that suits its purpose. Sir 
Thomas Cullum discovered the nest of one in the inside of the lock of 
a garden-gate, in which I have also since twice found them. It should 
seem, however, that such situations would be too cold for the grubs with- 
out a coating of some non-conducting substance. ‘The parent bee, there- 
fore, after having constructed the cells, laid an egg in each, and filled them 
with a store of suitable food, plasters them with a covering of vermiform 
masses, apparently composed of honey and pollen; and having done this, 
aware, long before Count Rumford’s experiments, what materials conduct 
heat most slowly, she attacks the woolly leaves of Stachys lanata, Agros- 
temma coronaria, and similar plants, and with her mandibles industriously 
scrapes off the wool, which with her fore legs she rolls into a little ball 
and carries to her nest. This wool she sticks upon the plaster that covers 
her cells, and thus closely envelops them with a warm coating of down, 
impervious to every change of temperature.* 


1 Melitta.*. a. K. 

2 Grew’s Rarities of Gresham College, 154. Kirby, Mon. Ap. Angl. i. 131. Melitta.*. a. 

3 Curtis, Brit. Ent. t. 61. 

4 Mon. Ap. Aagl. i. 173. Apis. **.c. 2. a. From later observations I am inclined to 
think that these cells may possibly, as in the case of the humble hee, be in fact formed by 
the larva previously to becoming a pupa, after having eaten the provision of pollen and 
honey with which the parent bee had surrounded it. The vermicular shape, however, of 
the masses with which the cases sre surrounded does not seem easily reconcilable with this 
supposition, unless they are considered as the excrement of the larva. 


24* 


282 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


The bee last described may be said to exercise the trade of a clothier. 
Another numerous family would be more properly compared to carpenters, 
boring with incredible labor out of the solid wood long cylindrical tubes, 
and dividing them into various cells. Amongst these, one of the most 
remarkable is Xylocopa! violacea, a large species, a native of middle and 
southern Europe, distinguished by beautiful wings of a deep violet color, 
and found commonly in gardens, in the upright putrescent espaliers or 
vine-props of which, and occasionally in the garden seats, doors, and 
window-shutters, she makes her nest. In the beginning of spring, after 
repeated and careful surveys, she fixes upon a piece of wood suitable for 
ber purpose, and with her strong mandibles begins the process of boring. 
First proceeding obliquely downwards, she soon points her course in a 
direction parallel with the sides of the wood, and at length with unwearied 
exertion forms a cylindrical hole or tunnel not less than twelve or fifteen 
inches long and half an inch broad. Sometimes, where the diameter will 
admit of it, three or four of these pipes, nearly parallel with each other, 
are bored in the same piece. Herculean as this task, which is the labor 
of several days, appears, it is but a small part of what our industrious bee 
cheerfully undertakes. As yet she has completed but the shell of the 
destined habitation of her offspring ; each of which, to the number of ten 
or twelve, will require a separate and distinct apartment. How, you will 
ask, is she to form these? With what materials can she construct the 
floors and ceilings? Why truly Gop “ doth instruct her to discretion and 
doth teach her.’ In excavating her tunnel she has detached a large 
quantity of fibres, which lie on the ground like a heap of saw-dust. This 
material supplies all her wants. Having deposited an egg at the bottom 
of the cylinder along with the requisite store of pollen and honey, she 
next, at the height of about three quarters of an inch (which is the depth 
of each cell), constructs of particles of the saw-dust glued together, and 
also to the sides of the tunnel, what may be called an annular stage or 
scaffolding. When this is sufficiently hardened, its interior edge affords 
support for a second ring of the same materials, and thus the ceiling is 
gradually formed of these concentric circles, till there remains only a 
small orifice in its centre, which is also closed with a circular mass of 
agglutinated particles of saw-dust. When this partition, which serves as 
the ceiling of the first cell and the flooring of the second, is finished, it is 
about the thickness of a crown-piece, and exhibits the appearance of as 
many concentric circles as the animal has made pauses in her labor. 
One cell being finished, she proceeds to another, which she furnishes and 
completes in the same manner, and so on until she has divided her whole 
tunnel into ten or twelve apartments. 

Here, if you have followed me in this detail with the interest which I 
wish it to inspire, a query will suggest itself. It will strike you that such 
a laborious undertaking as the constructing and furnishing these cells 
cannot be the work of one or even of two days. Considering that every 
cell requires a store of honey and pollen, not to be collected but with long 
toil, and that a considerable interval must be spent in agglutinating the 
floors of each, it will be very obvious to you that the last egg in the last 
cell must be laid many days after the first. We are certain, therefore, 


1 Apis. **. d. 2. @. K. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 283 


that the first ege will become a grub, and consequently a perfect bee, 
many days before the last. What then becomes of it? you willask. It 
is impossible that it should make its escape through eleven superincumbent 
cells without destroying the immature tenants; and it seems equally 
impossible that it should remain patiently in confinement below them until 
they are all disclosed. This dilemma our heaven-tought architect has 
provided against. With forethought never enough to be admired she has 
not constructed her tunnel with one opening only, but at the further end 
has pierced another orifice, a kind.of back door, through which the insects 
produced by the first-laid eggs successively emerge into day. In fact, all 
the young bees, even the uppermost, go out by this road; for, by an 
exquisite instinct, each grub, when about to become a pupa, places itself 
in its cell with its head downwards, and thus is necessitated, when arrived 
at its last state, to pierce its cell in this direction.' 

Ceratina albilabris of Spinola, who has given an interesting account of 
its manners, forms its cell upon the general plan of the bee just described, 
but, more economical of labor, chooses a branch of briar or bramble, in 
the pith of which she excavates a canal about a foot long, and one 
line, or sometimes more, in diameter, with from eight to tween, dolls sepa- 
rated from each other by partitions of particles of pith glued together? ; 
and from the dead sticks of the same plants, in which they had formed 
their cells in a similar way, MM. Dufour and Perris have bred in the sandy 
district of the Landes in the south-west of France not fewer than twelve 
distinct species of wild bees and other Hymenoptera, namely, four species 
of Osmia, two of Ceratina, three of Odynerus, two of Solenius, and 
Trypoxylon figulus, besides fifteen species of parasitic Hymenoptera of 
the genera Stelis, Prosopis, Ichneumon, Chrysis, &c., making in all twenty- 
seven species of hymenopterous insects obtained from this prolific habitat, 
for which, too, they were indebted for very rare insects, which they had 
never before met with. Mr. Thwaites has been also very successful in 
obtaining Hymenoptera from this source, having bred from dead bramble 
sticks found near Bristol Hyleus annularis and a new species, Ceratina 
albilabris Sp. cyanea K., Osmia leucomelana, Epipone levipes, Cemonus 
unicolor, Spilomena Troglodytes, a new species of Trypoxylon, and an 
unascertained one of Cladius, besides seven species of parasitic Hyme- 
noptera, including Stelis minuta, Chrysis cyanea, Hedychrum auratum, 
Cryptus bellosus, and three other Ichneumonidae, in all, sixteen species.— 
Crabro tibialis, which M. Perris says is parasitic on Hymenoptera residing 
in bramble-sticks (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ix. 407.), has been also 
found in this habitat near Bristol by Thomas Lighton, Esq. 

Such are the curious habitations of the carpenter bees and their ana- 
logues. Next I shall introduce you to the not less interesting structures of 
another group of bees, which carry on the trade of masons (Megachile 
muraria), building their solid houses solely of artificial stone. The first 
step of the mother bee is to fix upon a proper situation for the future man- 
sion of her offspring. For this she usually selects an angle, sheltered by 
any projection, on the south side of a stone wall. Her next care is to 
provide materials for the structure. The chief of these is sand, which she 


1 Reaum. vi. 39—52. Mon. Ap. Angl. i. 189. Aphis: ¥#. a. 2. 8. 
2 Ann. du Mus. x. 236. 2 Ann, Soc. Ent. de France, ix. 1—53. 


284 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


carefully selects grain by grain from such as contains some mixture of earth, 
These grains she glues together with her viscid saliva into masses the size 
of small shot, and transports by means of her jaws to the site of her cas- 
tle. With a number of these masses, which are the artificial stone of 
which her building is to be composed, united by a cement preferable to ours, 
she first forms the basis or foundation of the whole. Next she raises the 
walls of a cell, which is about an inch in length, and half an inch broad, 
and, before its orifice is closed, in form resembles a thimble. This, after 
depositing an egg and a supply of honey and pollen, she covers in, and 
then proceeds to the erection of a second, which she finishes in the same 
manner, until the whole number, which varies from four to eight, is com- 
pleted. The vacuities between the cells, which are not placed in any 
regular order, some being parallel to the wall, others perpendicular to it, 
and others inclined to it at different angles, this laborious architect fills up 
with the same material of which the cells are composed, and then bestows 
upon the whole group a common covering of coarser grains of sand. The 
form of the whole nest, which when finished is a solid mass of stone so 
hard as not to be easily penetrated with the blade of a knife, is an irregular 
oblong of the same color as the sand, and to a casual observer more 
resembling a splash of mud than an artificial structure. ‘These bees some- 
times are more economical of their Jabor, and repair old nests, for the pos- 
session of which they have very desperate combats. One would have 
supposed that the inhabitants of a castle so fortified might defy the attacks 
of every insect marauder. Yet an Ichneumon and a beetle (Clerus api- 
arius) both contrive to introduce their eggs into the cells, and the larve 
proceeding from them devour their inhabitants.” 

Other bees of the same group with that last described use different 
materials in the construction of their nests. Some employ fine earth made 
into a kind of mortar with gluten. Another (Osmia® c@rulescens), as we 
learn from De Geer, forms its nest of argillaceous earth mixed with chalk, 
upon stone walls, and sometimes probably nidificates in chalk-pits. O. 
bicornis, according to Reaumur, selects the hollows of large stones for the 
site of its dwelling; but in England seems to prefer rotten posts and pal- 
ings, in which it bores upwards, and then forms the partitions of its cells 
of clay and sand glued together. One species of this genus (O. gallarum) 
saves itself trouble by placing its cells in an abandoned gall of the oak, 
and others select, with the like object, empty snail-shells.4 One remarka- 
ble peculiarity of some of these insects is, that they conceal the place 
where their cells are situated with some extraneous material. Thus O. 
gallarum hides the galls it has adopted by glueing round them oak leaves, 


1 Reaumur plausibly supposes that it has been from observing this bee thus loaded, that 
the tale, mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny, of the hive-bee’s ballasting itself with a bit of 
stone previously to flying home in a high wind has arisen. 

® Reaum. vi. 57—88. Mon. Ap. Angl.i. 179. According to M. Goureau, Reaumur and 
succeeding entomologists have always confounded Qnder Megachile muraria two very dis- 
tinct species. The first, which he considers the true one, constructs its nest in April,— 
selecting the exposed surface of a rock, stone, or wall (not an angle), and preferring soli- 
tary places distant both from the noise of the abode.of man and from the habitations of its 
own tribe; whereas the other, which does not begin its nest till the end of May or beginning 
of June, always places it in the angle of some wall or pilaster, &c. of a building, seeming 
to prefer inhabited houses and to be near others of its species, close to whose nests it often 
places its own. (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ix. 118.) 

3 Apis. **. c, 2.8. K. * Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 274. 


* 
HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 285 


and a species which M. Goureau conceives to be O. bicolor employed a 
whole day in arranging over the mouth (as he supposes) of its cell pieces 
of grass about two inches long, in a conical or tent-like form’; and that 
this species employs this material for some purpose connected with its nest 
is confirmed by Mr. Thwaites, who observed a female for a considerable 
time fetching similar pieces of grass, and laying them over a snail-shell, 
where he had every reason to believe she had formed her cells. Unfog- 
tunately neither M. Goureau nor Mr. Thwaites could pursue their observa- 
tions, not having been able the following day to find any trace of the labors 
they had observed on that preceding. 

The works thus far described require in general less genius than labor 
and patience: but it is far otherwise with the nests of the last tribe of 
artificers amongst wild bees, to which I shall advert—the hangers of tapes- 
try, or upholsterers—those which line the holes excavated in the earth for 
the reception of their young with an elegant coating of flowers or of leaves. 
Amongst the most interesting of these is Megachile? Papaveris, a species 
whose manners have been admirably described by Reaumur. ‘This little 
bee, as though fascinated with the color most attractive to our eyes, inva- 
riably chooses for the hangings of her apartments the most brilliant searlet, 
selecting for its material the petals of the wild poppy, which she dexte- 
rously cuts into the proper form. Her first process is to excavate in some 
pathway a burrow, cylindrical at the entrance but swelled out below to 
the depth of about three inches. Having polished the walls of this little 
apartment, she next flies to a neighboring field, cuts out oval portions of 
the flowers of poppies, seizes them between her legs and returns with them 
to her cell; and though separated from the wrinkled petal of a half- 
expanded flower, she knows how to straighten their folds, and, if too large, 
to fit them to her purpose by cutting off the superfluous parts. Beginning 
at the bottom, she overlays the walls of her mansion with this brilliant 
tapestry, extending it also on the surface of the ground round the margin 
of the orifice. The bottom is rendered warm by three or four coats, and 
the sides have never less than two. The little upholsterer, having com- 
pleted the hangings of her apartment, next fills it with pollen and honey 
to the height of about half an inch; then, after committing an egg to it, 
she wraps over the poppy lining so that even the roof may be of this ma- 
terial, and lastly closes its mouth with a small hillock of earth.2 The 
great depth of the cell compared with the space which the single egg and 
the accompanying food deposited in it occupy deserves particular notice. 
This is not more than half an inch at the bottom, the remaining two inches 
and a half being subsequently filled with earth—When you next favor 
me with a visit, l can show you the cells of this interesting insect as yet 
unknown to British entomologists, for which I am indebted to the kindness 
of M. Latreille, who first scientifically described the species.* 

Megachile centuncularis, M. Willughbiella, and other species of the 
same family, like the preceding, cover the walls of their cells with a coat- 
ing of leaves, but are content with a more sober color, generally selecting 
for their hangings the leaves of trees, especially of the rose, whence they 
have been known by the name of the leaf-cutter bees. 'They differ also 


t Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ix. 123. Anise # Sere. a> K, 
3 Reaum. vi. 139—148. 4 Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 297. 


4 
286 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


from M. Papaveris in excavating longer burrows, and filling them with 
several thimble-shaped cells composed of portions offleaves so curiously 
convoluted, that, if we were ignorant in what school they have been 
taught to construct them, we should never credit their being the work of 
an insect. Their entertaining history, so long ago as 1670, attracted the 
attention of our countrymen Ray, Lister, Willughby, and Sir Edward 
King ; but we are indebted for the most complete account of their pro- 
. cedures to Reaumur. 

The mother bee first excavates a cylindrical hole eight or ten inches 
long, in a horizontal direction, either in the ground or in the trunk of a 
rotten willow-tree, or occasionally in other decaying wood. This cavity 
she fills with six or seven cells wholly composed of portions of leaf, of 
the shape of a thimble, the convex end of one closely fitting into the open 
end of another. Her first process is to form the exterior coating, which is 
composed of three or four pieces of Jarger dimensions than the rest, and of 
an oval form. The second coating is formed of portions of equal size, nar- 
row at one end but gradually widening towards the other, where the width 
equals half the length. One side of these pieces is the serrate margin of 
the leaf from which it was taken, which, as the pieces are made to lap 
one over the other, is kept on the outside, and that which has been cut 
within. The little animal now forms a third coating of similar materials, 
the middle of which, as the most skilful workman would do in similar 
circumstances, she places over the margins of those that form the first 
tube, thus covering and strengthening the junctures. Repeating the same 
process, she gives a fourth and sometimes a fifth coating to her nest, taking 
care, at the closed end or narrow extremity of the cell, to bend the leaves 
so as to form a convex termination. Having thus finished a cell, her next 
business is to fill it to within half a line of the orifice with a rose-colored 
conserve composed of honey and pollen, usually collected from the flowers 
of thistles; and then having deposited her egg, she closes the orifice 
with three pieces of leaf so exactly circular, that a pair of compasses 
could not define their margin with more truth ; and coinciding so precisely 
with the walls of the cell, as to be retained in their situation merely by 
the nicety of their adaptation. After this covering is fitted in, there 
remains still a concavity which receives the convex end of the succeeding - 
cell; and in this manner the indefatigable little animal proceeds until 
she has completed the six or seven cells which compose her cylinder. 

The process which one of these bees employs in cutting the pieces of 
leaf that compose her nest is worthy of attention. Nothing can be more 
expeditious : she is not longer about it than we should be with a pair of 
scissors. After hovering for some moments over a rose-bush, as if to 
reconnoitre the ground, the bee alights upon the leaf which she has 
selected, usually taking her station upon its edge, so that the margin passes 
between ber legs. With her strong mandibles she cuts without intermis- 
sion in a curve line so as to detach a triangular portion. When this hangs 
by the last fibre, lest its weight should carry her to the ground, she bal- 
ances her little wings for flight, and the very moment it parts from the leaf 
flies off with it in triumph; the detached portion remaining bent between 
her legs in a direction perpendicular to her body. ‘Thus without rule or 
compasses do these diminutive creatures mete out the materials of their 


. 
—_- 


4 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 287 


work into portions of an ellipse, into ovals or circles, accurately accommo- 
dating the dimensions of the several pieces of each figure to each other. 
What other architect could carry impressed upon the tablet of his memory 
the entire idea of the edifice which he has to erect, and, destitute of 
square or plumb-line, cut out his materials in their exact dimensions with- 
out making a single mistake? Yet this is what our little bee invariably 
does. So far are human art and reason excelled by the teaching of the 
Almighty.? 

Other insects besides bees construct habitations of different kinds for 
their young, as various species of burrowing wasps (Fossores), Geotrupes, 
&c., which deposit their eggs in cylindrical excavations that become the 
abode of the future larve. In the procedures of most of these nothing 
worth particularizing occurs; but one species, called by Reaumur the 
mason-wasp (Odynerus murarius), referred to in a former letter, works 
upon so singular a plan, that it would be improper to pass it over in 
silence, especially as these nests may be found in this country in most 
sandy banks exposed to the sun. This insect bores a cylindrical cavity 
from two to three inches deep, in hard sand which its mandibles alone 
would be scarcely capable of penetrating, were it not provided with a 
slightly glutinous liquor which it pours out of its mouth, that, like the 
vinegar with which Hannibal softened the Alps, acts upon the cement of 
the sand, and renders the separation of the grains easy to the double pick- 
axe with which our little pioneer is furnished. But the most remarkable 
circumstance is the mode in which it disposes of the excavated materials. 
Instead of throwing them at random on a heap, it carefully forms them 
into little oblong pellets, and arranges them round the entrance of the hole 
so as to form a tunnel, which, when the excavation is completed, is often 
not less than two or three inches in length. For the greater part of its 
height this tunnel is upright, but towards the top it bends into a curve, 
always, however, retaining its cylindrical form. ‘The little masses are so 
attached to each other in this cylinder as to leave numerous vacuities 
between them, which give it the appearance of filagree-work. You will 
readily divine that the excavated hole is intended for the reception of an 
eggs, but for what purpose the external tunnel is meant is not so apparent. 
One use, and perhaps the most important, would seem to be to prevent 
the incursions of the artful Ichneumons, Chryside, &c., which are ever 
on the watch to insinuate their parasitic young into the nests of other 
insects: it may render their access to the nest more difficult; they may 
dread to enter into so long and dark a defile. I have seen, however, 
more than once a Chrysis come out of these tunnels. That its use is only 
temporary is plain from the circumstance that the insect employs the 
whole fabric, when its ege is laid and store of fruit procured, in filling up 
the remaining vacuity of the hole; taking down the pellets, which are 
very conveniently at hand, and placing them in it until the entrance is 
filled."—Latreille informs us that a nearly similar tunnel, but composed of 
grains of earth, is built at the entrance of its cell by a bee of his family 
of pioneers.3 . 


The habitations hitherto described are used simply as an abode for the 
a 


1 Reaum. vi. 971—24. Mon. Ap. Angl. i. 157. Apis. **. c. 2. a. 
2? Reaum. vi. 251—257. t. xxvi. f. 1. 3 Latr. Fourmis, 419. 


288 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


future larva springing from the egg deposited in them by the parent female, 
and as a storehouse for its food ; but in another class of insect habitations 
the house itself serves both for the protection of the occupant and also 
for its subsistence, the larva eating the inner portion of its very walls. 
This is the case with the habitations constructed for their future larve by 
the beautiful weevils or long-snouted beetles of the genera Rhynchites, 
Aittelabus, and Apoderus, which consist of the whole, or more commonly 
a part, of a leaf of the tree on which they are to feed, rolled up with 
great art by the mother into a sort of cylinder sometimes resembling a 
little horn and at others a wallet more or less elongated, thus giving a 
singular appearance to the leaves so treated, which, while their basal por- 
tion retains its usual form, have their antramiies metamorphosed into these 
odd-looking appendages. A very interesting description of the mode in 
which these nests are constructed has been lately given by M. Huber of 
Geneva!, who has detailed the procedures of Rhynchites Bacchus with 
the leaves of the vine, of R. Populi with those of the poplar, of R. Betula 
with those of the beech and birch, of Apoderus Coryli with those of the 
hazle, and of Attelabus Curculionoides with those of the oak, of which 
last, as more fully described by M. Goureau, I will give you ashort account. 
The female having deposited a single egg, which adheres by its natural 
gluten, near the mid-rib of the end ‘of the upper side of the leaf she has 
selected, passes to the under surface, and slightly but repeatedly gnaws 
with her small jaws both the mid-rib and epidermis in every part unul both 
are rendered perfectly pliable. If the leaf be a small one she treats the 
whole of it in this way and rolls up the whole ; if a large one she thus 
prepares only about one third or one half of it, and cuts it across, all 
except the mid-rib, with her jaws at the proper point, so as to leave a 
sufficient extent of pliable leaf for her operations. Her next business is 
to roll up this terminal portion of the leaf, in effecting which she thus 
proceeds. First she folds it together longitudinally so as to cover her egg, 
the mid-rib forming one edge of the folded part and its marginal serratures 
the other point. Next she places herself at a right angle with the mid-rib, 
towards which her tail is directed while her head points to the serratures, 
and fixing the claws of her two hind left legs into the leaf, she employs 
those of the two hind right legs to pull the point of it towards her; and 
by a repetition of these manceuvres, not easily described, she at last succeeds 
in rolling the whole into a little cylinder having at one end the mid-rib 
whose spirals there resemble those of the main-spring of a watch, and at 
the other, which is of a less regular shape, the serratures of the leaf, so 
pushed in by means of her trunk and fore-legs as to retain the whole in 
its cylindrical form. ‘The larva proceeding from the egg thus deposited 
towards the end of May is hatched early in June and never quits the 
habitation which its provident and truly laborious mother (for each egg 
requires its separate leaf and the long process above described) has pre- 
pared for it, eating in succession the different rolls.of its cylinder, till it has 
attained its full erowth®. 

Under this heat too, may be most conveniently arranged the very 


1 Mémoires de la Societé de Physique et d’ Histoire Naturelle de Geneve, viii. 2de partie, 
1839, quoted to M. Goureau, Ann, Soc. Ent. de France, x. 21. 
2 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, x. 21—27. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 289 


singular habitations of the larve of the Linnzan genus Cynips, the gall- 
fly, though they can with no propriety be said to be constructed by the 
mother, who, provided with an instrument as potent as an enchanter’s 
wand, has but to pierce the site of the foundation, and commodious apart- 
ments, as if by magic, spring up and surround the germ of her future 
descendants. I allude to those vegetable excrescences termed galls, some 
of which resembling beautiful berries and others apples, you must have 
frequently observed on the leaves of the oak, and of which one species, 
the Aleppo gall, as I have before noticed, is of such importance in the 
ingenious art “de peindre la parole et de parler aux yeux.” All these 
tumors owe their origin to the deposition of an egg in the substance out of 
which they grow. ‘This egg, too small almost for perception, the parent 
insect, a little four-winged fly, introduces into a puncture made by her 
curious spiral sting, and in a few hours it becomes surrounded with a 
fleshy chamber, which not only serves its young for shelter and defence, 
but also, like those habitations last described, for food ; the future little 
hermit feeding upon its interior and there undergoing its metamorphosis. 
Nothing can be more varied than these habitations. ‘Some are of a glo- 
bular form, a bright red color, and smooth fleshy consistence, resembling 
beautiful fruits, for which, indeed, as you have before been told, they are 
eaten in the Levant: others, beset with spines or clothed with hair, are 
so much like seed-vessels, that an eminent modern chemist has contended 
respecting the Aleppo gall that it is actually a capsule. Some are exactly 
round ; others like little mushrooms; others resemble artichokes ; while 
others again might be taken for flowers ; in short, they are of a hundred 
different forms, and of all sizes from that of a pin’s head to that of a 
walnut. Nor is their situation on the plant less diversified. Some are 
found upon the leaf itself; others upon the footstalks only ; others upon 
the roots, and others upon the buds.? Some of them cause the branches 
upon which they grow to shoot out into such singular forms, that the plants 
producing them were esteemed by the old botanists distinct species. Of 
this kind is the Rose-willow, which old Gerard figures and describes as 
“not only making a gallant shew, but also yeelding a most cooling aire 
in the heat of summer, being set up in houses for the decking of the same.” 
This willow is nothing more than one of the common species, whose twigs, 
in consequence of the deposition of the egg of a Cynips in their summits, 
there shoot out into numerous leaves totally different in shape from the 
other leaves of the tree, and arranged not much unlike those composing 
the flower of a rose, adhering to the stem even after the others fall off. 
Sir James Smith mentions a similar Zusus on the Provence willows, which 
at first he took for a tufted lichen.2 From the same cause the twigs of 
the common wild rose often shoot out into a beautiful tuft of numerous 
reddish moss-like fibres wholly dissimilar from the leaves of the plant, 
deemed by the old naturalists a very valuable medical substance, to which 
they erroneously gave the name of Bedeguar. None of these variations 


1 Aikin’s Dictionary of Chemistry, i. 455. What have probably been taken by Mr. Aikin 
for “ kernels,” in the imperforated nuts, are the cocoons of the inhabitants of these galls in 
the pupa state, which often extremely resemble the seeds of a capsule, as Reaumur (iii. 429.) 
has remarked. 

2 Reaum. iii. 417, &c. 3 Introd. to Botany, 349. 


25 


290 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


is accidental or common to several of the tribe, but each peculiar to the 
galls formed by a single and distinct species of Cynips. 

The Poma Sodomitica, mala insana, or apples of the Dead Sea, 
beautiful to the eye, but filling the mouth with bitter ashes if tasted, 
whose existence, though mentioned by Tacitus, Strabo, and Josephus, 
has been questioned by Riland, Maundrell, and Shaw, and respecting 
which numerous contradictory and erroneous opinions by more recent 
authors have been collected by Mr. Conder in his Modern Traveller, have 
at length had their true history developed by the late venerable vice- 
president of the Linnean Society, A. B. Lambert, Esq.1, Walter Elliot, 
Esq., and J. O. Westwood, Esq.” From their combined observations, it 
has been ascertained that the Poma Sodomitica are actual galls, two 
inches long and an inch and a half in diameter, of a beautiful rich glossy 
purplish red exteriorly, and filled with an intensely bitter, porous, and 
easily pulverized substance, surrounding the insect (Cynips insana West- 
wood), which has given birth to them, and were found by Mr. Elliott 
growing on various species of dwarf oaks beyond the Jordan and in the 
Troad, to the twigs of which Mr. Westwood remarks they are attached 
in a curious manner, unlike what he has seen in any other galls, the 
narrow end “rising upwards on each side and bending inwards, so as to 
clasp the extremity of the twig somewhat like a pair of wide and curved 
nippers.”” 

How the mere insertion of an egg into the substance of a leaf or twig, 
even if accompanied, as some imagine, by a peculiar fluid, should cause 
the growth of such singular protuberances around it, philosophers are as 
little able to explain, as why the insertion of a particle of variolous matter 
into a child’s arm should cover it with pustules of small pox. In both 
cases the effects seem to proceed from some action of the foreign sub- 
stance upon the secreting vessels of the animal or vegetable: but of the 
nature of this action we know nothing. ‘Thus much is ascertained by the 
observations of Reaumur and Malpighi—that the production of the gall, 
which, however large, attains its full size in a day or two%, is caused by 
the egg or some accompanying fluid; not by the larva, which does not 
appear until the gall is fully formed*: that the galls which spring from 
leaves almost constantly take their origin from nerves®; and that the egg, 
at the same time that it causes the growth of the gall, itself derives nourish- 
ment from the substance that surrounds it, becoming considerably larger 
before it is hatched than it was when first deposited.© When chemically 
analyzed, galls are found to contain only the same principles as the plant 
from which they spring, but in a more concentrated state. 

No productions of nature seem to have puzzled the ancient philosophers 
more than galls. ‘Thecommentator on Dioscorides, Mathiolus, who agree- 
ably to the doctrine of those days ascribed their origin to spontaneous 
generation, gravely informs us that weighty prognostications as to the 
events of the ensuing year may be deduced from ascertaining whether 
they contain spiders, worms, or flies. Other philosophers, who knew 
that, except by rare accident, no other animals are to be found in galls 
besides grubs of different kinds, which they rationally conceived to spring 


1 Linn. Trans. xvii. 445, 2 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 16. 
3 Reaum. ili. 474. 4 Ibid. 479. 5 Ibid. 501, 6 Ibid. 479. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. Q91 


from eggs, were chiefly at a loss to account for the conveyance of these 
eggs into the middle of a substance in which they could find no external 
orifice. They therefore inferred that they were the eggs of insects depo- 
sited in the earth, which had been drawn up by the roots of trees along 
with the sap, and after passing through different vessels had stopped, some 
in the leaves, others in the twigs, and had there hatched and produced 
galls! Redi’s solution of the difficulty was even more extraordinary. 
This philosopher, who had so triumphantly combated the absurdities of 
spontaneous generation, fell himself into greater. Not having been able 
to witness the deposition of eggs by the parent flies in the plants that 
produce galls, he took it for granted that the grubs which he found within 
them could not spring from eggs: and he was equally unwilling to admit 
their origin from spontaneous generation,—an admission which would 
have been fatal to his own most brilliant discoveries. He therefore cut 
the knot, by supposing that to the same vegetative soul by which fruits 
and plants are produced is committed the charge of creating the larve 
found in galls! An instance truly humiliating : how little we can infer 
from a man’s just ideas on one point, that he will not be guilty of the 
most pitiable absurdity on another! 

Though by far the greater part of the vegetable excrescences termed 
galls are caused by insects of the genus Cynips, they do not always origi- 
nate from this tribe. Some are produced by weevils of different genera 
and species. ‘Thus those on the roots of kedlock (Sinapis arvensis) I 
have ascertained to be inhabited by the larve of Nedyus contractus and 
assimilis. From the knob-like galls on turnips, called in some places the 
ambury, I have bred another of these weevils (Curculio pleurostigma 
Marsh., Rhynchenus sulcicollis Gyll.), and I have little doubt that the 
same insects, or species allied to them, cause the clubbing of the roots of 
cabbages.* It seems to be a beetle of the same family that is figured by 
Reaumur® as causing the galls on the leaves of the lime-tree. Mr. West- 
wood has traced the transformations of a minute species of Balaninus, 
which resides in the large and fleshy galls on the leaves of willows, occa- 
sionally in company with the larve of Nematus intercus ; Bouché has 
also described the larva of Balaninus salicivorus Schon., which is found 
in the galls on the leaves of Salix vitellina, and that of Gymnetron villos- 
ulus, which lives in a gall formed on Veronica beccabunga. According to 
Hammerschmidt, Cleopus affinis also resides in galls upon the roots of 
Sinapis arvensis, Cleonus Linaria, in galls at the roots of Antirrhinum 
Linarie, and Baris caerulescens in the stems of Reseda lutea, all in their 
larva state*; and M. Perris has obtained an Apion (A. ulicicola P.) from galls 
on the young branches of Ulex nanus®, an interesting fact, as proving, with 
a similar one observed by Mr. Westwood as to Apion radiolum which he 
potest Gel Le Tee ee GE deer 

? Mr. Westwood informs us that he has not detected any other larve in the clubs at the 
roots of cabbages than those of a species of Muscid@ (Anthomyia brassice), and which had 


evidently been produced from eggs laid in crevices of the already formed clubs. 

3 Reaum. iii. t. 38. f. 2, 3. 

4 Bouché Naturgesch, &c. and Hammerschmidt Observ. Physiol. Pathol. de Plant. Gallarum 
ortu, quoted in Westwood’s Modern Classif. i. 342. I have some suspicion that a little 
weevil, Letosoma ovatula, of which I found ten or twelve early in the spring 1842, near 
Bristol, under the leaves of Ranunculus bulbosus, which they had pierced with numerous 
holes, may reside in the larva state in galls on the root of this plant. 

5 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ix. 90. 


292 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


found undergoing its transformations in the stems °f the hollyhock', that 
all the species of this genus do not pass their larva state in the interior of 
seeds as most of them do. Other galls owe their origin to moths, as those 
resembling a nutmeg which Reaumur received from Cyprus? ; and others 
again to two-winged flies, as the woody galls of the thistle caused by 
Trypeta Curdui*, and the cottony galls found on ground ivy, wild thyme, 
&c., as well as a very singular one on the juniper resembling a flower, 
described by De Geer‘, all which are the work of minute gall-gnats 
(Cecidomyie Latr.). Some of these last convert even the flowers of 
plants into a kind of galls, as J’. Loti of De Geer®, which inhabits the 
blossoms of Lotus corniculatus ; and one which I have myself observed 
to render the flowers of Erysimum Barbarea like ahop blossom. A similar 
monstrous appearance is communicated to the flowers of Teucrium supinum 
by a little field-bug, Tingis Teucriz of Host®, and to another plant of the 
same genus by one of the same tribe described by Reaumur.? In these 
two last instances, however, the habitations do not seem strictly entitled 
to the appellation of galls, as they originate not from the egg, but from the 
larva, which, in the operation of extracting the sap, in some way imparts 
a morbid action to the juices, causing the flower to expand unnaturally ; 
and the same remark is applicable to the gall-like swellings formed by 
many Aphides, as 4. Pistacia, which causes the leaves of different species 
of Pistacta, to expand into red finger-like cavities; A. Abietis, which 
converts the buds or young shoots of the fir into a very beautiful gall, 
somewhat resembling a fir-cone, or a pine-apple in miniature; and A, 
Bursarie, which with its brood inhabits angular utriculion the leaf-stalk of 
the black poplar, numbers of which I have observed on those trees by the 
road-side from Hull to Cottingham. The majority of galls are what ento- 
mologists have denominated monothalamous, or consisting of only one 
chamber or cell ; but some are polythalamous, or consisting of several. 

Among the more remarkable galls are those so much resembling minute 
fungi as to have been actually described as such ; as Sclerotium fasciculatum 
Schumacher, which is a common gall on oak leaves; and the Rev. M. J. 
Berkeley has given an account of a similar one found by W. S. MacLeay, 
Esq., in Cuba, on the leaf of a plant of the order Ochnacee, which on a 
cursory examination was regarded by some of our first botanists as an 
epiphytous fungus, but proved on dissection to be a true gall, and distin- 
guished from all previously known by its very curious operculum or lid, 
evidently meant for the more ready egress of thet occupant (which has not 
yet been ascertained) in its perfect state.® 

Having thus described the most remarkable of the habitations constructed 
by the parent insects for the accommodation of their future young, I proceed 
to the second kind mentioned ; namely, those which are formed by the 
insect itself for its own use. ‘These may be again subdivided into such 
as are the work of the insects in their larva state ; and such as are formed 
by perfect insects. 

Many larve of all orders need no other habitations than the holes which 
they form in seeking for, or eating, the substances upon which they feed. 


1 Westwood, whi supra, i. 337. 2 Reaum. iii. 448. 3 Thid. 455. 
4 De Geer, vi. 409. 5 De Geer, vi. 421. 6 Jacquin Collect. ii. 255. 
7 Reaum, ili. 427. 8 Trans. Linn. Soc. xviii. 576. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 293 


Of this description are the majority of subterranean larve, and those which 
feed on wood; as the Bostrichi or labyrinth beetles ; the Anobia, which 
_ excavate the little circular holes frequently met with in ancient furniture 
and the wood-work of old houses; and many larve of other orders, 
particulaly Lepidoptera. One of these last, the larva of Cossus ligniperda, 
differs from its congeners in fabricating for its residence during winter a 
habitation of pieces of wood lined with fine silk. Under this division, too, 
come the singular habitations of the subcutaneous larve, so called from the 
circumstance of their feeding upon the parenchyma included between the 
_ upper and under cuticles of the leaves of plants, between which, though 
the whole leaf is often not thicker than a sheet of writing-paper, they find 
at once food and lodging. You must have been at some time struck by 
certain white zigzag or labyrinth-like lines on the leaves of the dandelion, 
bramble, and numerous other plants: the next time you meet with one of 
them, if you hold it up to the light you will perceive that the color of 
these lines is owing to the pulpy substance of the leaf having there been 
removed ; and at the further end you will probably remark a dark-colored 
speck, which, when carefully extricated from its covering, you will find 
to be the little miner of the tortuous galleries which you are admiring. 
Some of these minute larve, to which the parenchyma of a leaf is a vast 
country, requiring several weeks to be traversed by the slow process of 
mining which they adopt—that of eating the excavated materials as they 
proceed—are transformed into beetles (Cronus thapsi, &c.) ; others into 
flies; and a still greater number into very minute moths, as Heribeta 
Clerkella, &c. Many of these last are little miracles of nature, which 
has lavished on them the most splended tints tastefully combined with 
gold, silver and pearl ; so that, were they but formed upon a larger scale, 
they would far eclipse oll other animals in richness of decoration. 

Another tribe of larve, not very numerous, content themselves for their 
habitations with simple holes, into which they retire occasionally. Many 
of these are merely cylindrical burrows in the ground, as those formed by 
the larve of field-crickets, Cicindele, and Ephemere. But the larve of 
the very remarkable lepidopterous genus (Nycterobius of Mr. MacLeay) 
before alluded to, excavate for themselves dwellings of a more artificial 
construction ; forming cylindrical holes in the trees of New Holland, 
particularly the different species of Banksia, to which they are very de- 
structive, and defending the entrance against the attacks of the Mantes 
and other carnivorous insects by a sort of trap-door composed of silk inter- 
woven with leaves and pieces of excrement, securely fastened at the upper 
end, but left loose at the lower for the free passage of the occupant. 
This abode they regularly quit at sunset, for the purpose of laying in a 
store of the leaves on which they feed. These they drag by one ata 
time into their cell until the approach of light, when they retreat precipi- 
tately into it, and there remain closely secluded the whole day, enjoying 
the booty which their nocturnal range has provided. One species lifts up 
the loose end of its door by its tail, and enters backward, dragging after 
it a leaf of Banksia serrata, which it holds by the foot-stalk.* 

A third description of larve, chiefly of the two lepidopterous tribes of 
Tortricide and Tineide, form into convenient habitations the leaves of 


1 Lyonet, Anat. of Coss. 9. 2 Lewin’s Prodromus Entom. p. 8. 


25* 


294 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


the plants on which they feed. Some of these merely connect together 
with a few silken threads several leaves so as to form an irregular packet, 
in the centre of which the little hermit lives. Others confine themselves 
to a single leaf, of which they simply fold one part over the other. A 
third description form and inhabit a sort of roll, by some species made 
cylindrical, by others conical, resembling the papers into which grocers 
put their sugar, and as accurately constructed ; only there is an opening 
left at the smaller extremity for the egress of the insect in case of need. 
If you were to see one of these rolls, you would immediately ask by what 
mechanism it could possibly be made—how an insect without fingers could 
contrive to bend a leaf into a roll, and to keep it in that form until fas- 
tened with the silk which holds it together? ‘The following is the opera- 
tion. The little caterpillar first fixes a series of silken cables from one side 
of the leaf to the other. She next pulls at these cables with her feet ; and 
when she has forced the sides to approach, she fastens them together with 
shorter threads of silk. If the insect finds that one of the larger nerves 
of the leaf is so strong as to resist her efforts, she weakens it by gnawing 
it here and there half through. What engineer could act more sagaciously ? 
To form one of the conical or horn-shaped rolls, which are not composed 
of a whole leaf, but of a long triangular portion cut out of the edge, some 
other manceuvres are requisite. Placing herself upon the leaf, the cater- 
pillar cuts out with her jaws the piece which is to compose her roll. She 
does not, however, entirely detach it: it would then want a base. She 
detaches that part only which is to form the contour of the horn. This 
portion is a triangular strap, which she rolls as she cuts. When the body 
of the horn is finished, as it is intended to be fixed upon the leaf in nearly 
an upright position it is necessary to elevate it. To effect this, she pro- 
ceeds as we should with an inclined obelisk. She attaches threads or 
little cables towards the point of the pyramid, and raises it by the weight 
of her body.! 

A still greater degree of dexterity is manifested in fabricating the hab- 
itations of the larve of some other moths which feed on the leaves of the 
rose-tree, apple, elm, and oak, on the underside of which they may in 
summer be often found. These form an oblong cavity in the interior of 
a leaf by eating the parenchyma between the two membranes composing 
its upper and under side, which, after having detached them from the sur- 
rounding portion, it joins with silk so artfully that the seams are scarcely 
discoverable even with a lens, so as to compose a case or horn, cylindrical 
in the middle, its anterior orifice circular, its posterior triangular. Were 
this dwelling cylindrical in every part, the form of the two pieces that 
compose it would be very simple ; but the different shape of the two ends 
renders it necessary that each side should have peculiar and dissimilar 
curvatures ; and Reaumur assures us, that these are as complex and diffi- 
cult to imitate as the contours of the pieces of cloth that compose the 
back of a coat. Some of this tribe, whose proceedings I had the pleasure 
of witnessing a short time since upon the alders in the Hull Botanic Gar- 
den, more ingenious than their brethren, and willing to save the labor of 
sewing up two seams in their dwelling, insinuate themselves near the edge 
of a leaf instead of in its middle. Here they form their excavation, 


' Bonnet, ix. 188. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 295 


mining into the very crenatures between the two surfaces of the leaf, 
which, being joined together at the edge, there form one seam of the case, 
and from their dentated figure give it a very singular appearance, not 
unlike that of some fishes which have fins upon their backs. The opposite 
side they are necessarily forced to cut and sew up; but even in this oper- 
ation they show an ingenuity and contrivance worthy of admiration. The 
moths which cut out their suit from the middle of the leaf wholly detach 
the two surfaces that compose it before they proceed to join them together ; 
the serrated incisions made by their teeth, which, if they do not cut as 
fast, in this respect are more effective than any scissors, interlacing each 
other so as to support the separated portions until they are properly joined. 
But it is obvious that this process cannot be followed by those moths 
which cut out their house from the edge of a leaf. If these were to 
detach the inner side before they had joined the two pieces together, the 
builder as well as his dwelling would inevitably fall. They therefore, 
before making any incision, prudently run (as a sempstress would call it) 
loosely together in distant points the two membranes on that side. Then 
putting out their heads they cut the intermediate portions, carefully avoid- 
ing the larger nerves of the leaf; afterwards they sew up the detached 
sides more closely, and only intersect the nerves when their labor is com- 
pleted.1. The habitation made by a moth which lives upon a species of 
Astragalus is in like manner formed of the epidermis of the leaves; but 
in this several corrugated pieces project over each other, so as to resemble 
the furbelows once in fashion.” 

Other larve construct their habitations wholly of si/k. Of this descrip- 
tion is that of a moth, whose abode, except as to the materials which 
compose it, is formed on the same general plan as that just described, and 
the larva in like manner feeds only on the parenchyma of the leaf. In 
the beginning of spring, if you examine the leaves of your pear trees, 
you will scarcely fail to meet with some beset on the under surface with 
several perpendicular downy russet-colored projections, about a quarter of 
an inch high, and not much thicker than a pin, of a cylindrical shape, 
with a protuberance at the base, and altogether resembling at first sight so 
many spines growing out of the leaf. You would never suspect that 
these could be the habitations of insects; yet that they are is certain. 
Detach one of them, and give it a gentle squeeze, and you will see emerge 
from the lower end a minute caterpillar, with a yellowish body and black 
head. Examine the place from which you have removed it, and you will 
perceive a round excavation in the cuticle and parenchyma of the leaf, 
the size of the end of the tube by which it was concealed. This excava- 
tion is the work of the above-mentioned caterpillar, which obtains its food 
by moving its little tent from one part of the leaf to the other, and eating 
away the space immediately under it. It touches no other part; and 
when these insects abound, as they often do to the great injury of pear 
trees*, you will perceive every leaf bristled with them, and covered with 
little withered specks, the vestiges of their former meals. The case in 
which the caterpillar resides, and which is quite essential to its existence, 
is composed of silk spun from its mouth almost as soon as it is excluded 


1 Reaum. iii. 100—120. ? Ibid. 146. 
3 Forsyth on Fruit Trees, 4to edit. 271. 


996 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


from the egg. As it increases in size, it enlarges its habitation by slitting 
it in two, and introducing a strip of new materials. “But the most curious 
circumstance in the history of this little Arab is the mode by which it 
retains its tent in a perpendicular posture. This it effects partly by 
attaching silken threads from the protuberance at the base to the surround- 
ing surface of the leaf. But being not merely a mechanician, but a pro- 
found natural philosopher, well acquainted with the properties of air, it 
has another recourse when any extraordinary violence threatens to overturn 
its slender turret. It forms a vacuum in the protuberance at the base, and 
thus as effectually fastens it to the leaf as if an air-pump had been em- 
ployed! This vacuum is caused by the insect’s retreating on the least 
alarm up its narrow case, which its body completely fills, and thus leaving 
the space below free of air. In detaching one of these cases you may 
easily convince yourself of the fact. If you seize it suddenly while the 
insect is at the bottom, you will find that it is readily pulled off, the silken 
cords giving way to a very slight force; but if, proceeding gently, you 
give the insect time to retreat, the case will be held so closely to the leaf 
as to require a much stronger effort to loosen it. As if aware that, should 
the air get admission from below, and thus render a vacuum impracticable, 
the strongest bulwark of its fortress would be destroyed, our little philoso- 
pher carefully avoids gnawing a hole in the leaf, contenting itself with 
the pasturage afforded by the parenchyma above the lower epidermis ; 
and when the produce of this area is consumed, it gnaws asunder the 
cords of its tent, and pitches it at a short distance as before. Having 
attained its full growth, it assumes the pupa state, and after a while issues 
out of its confinement a small brown moth, with long hind legs, the Pha- 
lena Tinea serratella of Linné.} 

Some larve, which form their covering of pure silk, are not content 
with a single coating, but actually envelop themselves in another, open on 
one side, and very much resembling a cloak; whence Reaumur called 
them “ Teignes a fourreau a manteau.”’ What is very striking in the 
construction of this cloak is, that the silk, instead of being woven into one 
uniform close texture, is formed into numerous transparent scales over- 
wrapping each other, and altogether very much resembling the scales of a 
fish.? These mantel-covered cases, one of which I once had the pleasure 
of discovering, are inhabited by the larva of a little moth apparently first 
described by Dr. Zincken genannt Sommer, who calls it Tinea palliatella.® 

Various substances besides silk are fabricated into habitations by other 
larve, though usually joined together either with silk or an analogous 
gummy material. Thus Diurnea? lichenwn forms of pieces of lichen a 
dwelling resembling one of the turreted Helices, many of which I observed 
in June, 1812, 0n an oak in Barham. The larva of another moth, which 
also feeds upon lichens, instead of employing these vegetables in forming 
its habitation, composes it of grains of stone eroded from the walls of 
buildings upon which its food is found, and connected by a silken cement. 
These insects were the subject of a paper in the Memoirs of the French 
Academy*, by M. de la Voye, who, from the circumstance of their being 


I att. Natur. Menschenleben und Vorsehung. Anderson’s Recreations, ii. 409. See 
above p. 1 
sd mee ili. 206. 3 Germar’s Mag. far Entomologie, i. 40. 4 x, 458. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 297 


found in great abundance on mouldering walls, attributed to them the 
power of eating stone, and regarded them as the authors of injuries pro- 
ceeding solely from the hand of time; for the insects themselves are so 
minute, and the coating of grains of stone composing their cases is so 
trifling, that Reaumur observes they could scarcely make any perceptible 
impression on a wall from which they had procured materials for ages." 

Another lepidopterous larva, but of a much larger size and different genus, 
the case of which is preserved i in the cabinet of the late President of the 
Linnean Society, who pointed it out to me, employs the spines apparently 
of some species of Mimosa, which are ranged side by side, so as to form 
a very elegant fluted cylinder. A similar arrangement of pieces of small 
twigs is observable in the habitation of the females? of the larve of a 
moth referred by Von Scheven to Bombyx vestita F. (which Ochsenheimer 
regards as synonymous with Psyche graminella); while P. Viciella of 
the Wiener Verzeichniss covers itself with short portions of the stems of 
grasses placed transversely, and united by means of silk into a five- or six- 
sided case. The habitation of a third larva of the same family, described 
and figured by Reaumur (P. graminella Ochsenh., just named), is com- 
posed of squarish pieces of the leaves of grass fastened only at one end, 
and overwrapping each other like the tiles of a house ; and that of another 
noticed by the same author, of portions of the smallest twigs of broom 
arranged on the same plan.? Indeed the larve of the whole ‘of this tribe 
of moths, now separated into a distinct genus (Psyche Schrank, Ochsenh., 
Fumea Haworth), but which, according to Germar, needs further subdi- 
vision, reside in cases or sacks (whence they are called by the Germans 
Sacktriiger) composed of silk, and fragments of grass, bark, &c.* 

The larve of a small beetle (Clytra longimana) reside in oviform cases, 
apparently of a calcareous or earthy substance, joined by a gummy 
cement, and covered with red hairs, the origin of which Hiibner, who 
first discovered them, could not account for; and from the observations of 
Amstein and the French translator of Fuessly’s Archives, it seems pro- 
bable that the larve of all the species of Clytra, and, according to 
Zschorn, at least of one species of Cryptocephalus (C. duodecimpunctatus) , 
live in moveable cases®; as do also the larve of Chlamys, a splendid 
Brazilian genus of the same family, and those of the equally brilliant 
genus Lamprosoma, forming them of their excrement, which in the former 
assume a singular appearance, from a very large and conical hollow mantle 
fitted to the mouth of the case. The larve of a species of Limnius (L. 
eneus) inhabit a fixed case made of particles of stone or sand: and the 


1 Reaum. iii. 183. 

® The larvee of the males intermix with the pieces of twigs, which are less closely and 
regularly arranged, bits of dried leaves and other light materials. See the excellent eluci- 
dation of the history of this tribe, whose mode of generation is so singular, by Von Scheven, 
in the Naturforscher, Stk. xx. 6L., &c.; also a valuable paper by Dr. Zincken genannt 
Sommer, in Germar’s Mag. fiir Ent. i. 19—40. 

3 Reaum. iii. 148, 149. “nl Lf. 2 (ea i 

4 In the hotter regions of the globe, this group is replaced by the gigantic Oiketici, several 
species of which have been figured by the late L. Guilding in the Transactions of the Lin- 
nean Society. Thecases of some of these insects exhibit an Geer degree of instinct 
in their construction, and are of a much larger size than a hen’s eg (See Westw. Mod. 
Class. Ins. ii. 388.) 

5 Fuessly, Archiv. 53. t. 31. Germar’s Mag. fir Ent. i. 136. 

6 Westwood in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. iii. proc. XXViii. 


298 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


same materials probably serve for the abode of the other species of this 
and those of allied genera which reside under water” 

Wax is the principal substance employed in the habitations of the larve 
before mentioned, occasionally so destructive to bee-hives. These insidi- 
ous depredators, which are mentioned by Aristotle’, tying together, with 
silk, grains of wax (which, and not honey, forms their food), construct 
galleries of a considerable length ; and thus concealed from the sight, and 
protected from the stings of the armed people whom they have attacked, 
push their mines into the very heart of the fortress, and pursue their 
robberies in perfect safety.” 

As many of the habitations which I have been describing fit the body 
of the insects as close as a coat, they might, perhaps with more propriety, 
be called clothes. This is certainly the most appropriate designation of 
the abodes of some species of Tinea (the clothes’ moths), which not only 
cover themselves with a coat, but employ the very same material in its 
composition as we do in ours, forming it of wool or hair curiously felted 
together. Like us, they are born naked ; but not, like us, helpless at that 
period: scarcely have they breathed before they begin to clothe them- 
selves ; thus contradicting Dr. Parley’s assertion, that “the human animal 
is the only one which is naked, and the only one which can clothe itself*: ” 
and, wisely inattentive to change of fashion, the same suit serves them 
from their birth to mature age. The shape of their dress is adapted to 
that of their body—a cylindrical case open at both ends. The stuff of 
which it is composed is the manufacture of the larva of the moth (T’nea), 
which incorporates wool or hair, artfully cut from our clothes or furniture, 
with silk drawn from its own mouth, into a warm and thick tissue; and as 
this would not be soft enough for its tender skin, it also lines the inside of 
its coat with a layer of pure silk. Since this suit of clothes during the 
earliest age of the insect accurately fits its body, you will readily conceive 
that it will frequently require enlarging. This the little occupant accom- 
plishes as dexterously as any tailor. If the,case merely requires length- 
ening, the task is easy. All that is needful is to add a new ring of hair 
or wool and silk to each end. But to enlarge it in width is not so simple 
an affair, Yet it sets to work precisely as we should, slitting the case on 
the two opposite sides, and then adroitly inserting between them two pieces 
of the requisite size. It does not, however, cut open the case from one 
end to the other at once: the sides would separate too far asunder, and 
the insect be left naked. It therefore first cuts each side about half way 
down, and then, after having filled up the fissure, proceeds to cut the 
remaining half; so that, in fact, four enlargements are made, and four 
separate pieces inserted. The color of the habit is always the same as 
that of the stuff from which it is taken. Thus, if its original color be 
blue, and the insect previously to enlarging it be put upon red cloth, the 
circles at the end and two stripes down the middle will be red. If placed 
alternately upon cloths of different hues, its dress will be parti-colored, 
like that of a Harlequin. The injury occasioned to us by these insects is 
not confined to the quantity of materials consumed in clothing and feeding 
themselves. In moving from place to place they seem to be as much 


1 Aristot. Hist. Anim. 1. viii. c. 2Ty 2 Reaum. iii, Mém, 8. 
3 Nat. Theol. 230. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 299 
incommoded by the long hairs which surround them as we are by walking 
amongst high grass; and accordingly, marching scythe in hand, with their 
teeth they cut out a smooth road, from time to time reposing themselves, 
and anchoring their little case with small silken cables. 

If, as I hope, you are induced to investigate the manners of these 
insects, you have but to leave an old coat for a few months undisturbed in 
a dark closet, and you may be pretty certain of meeting with an abundant 
colony. 

Not merely wool or hair, but another substance analogous to one 
employed in our dress, is adopted for their clothing by other insects. ‘The 
larva of a fly which lives on the seeds of willows makes itself a very 
beautiful case of their cottony down, not only impervious to wet and cold, 
but serving, if accidentally blown into the water, which, from the situation 
of these trees, frequently happens, as a buoyant little barge which is wafted 
safely to the shore.! 

The habitations which we have hitherto been considering are formed 
by larve that live on /and ; but others equally remarkable are constructed 
by aguatic species, the larve of the various Pyryganee L., a tribe of four- 
winged insects, which an ordinary observer would call moths, but which 
are even of a distinct order (Trichoptera), not having their wings covered 
by the scales which adorn the lepidopterous race. If you are desirous of 
examining the insects to which I am alluding, you have only to place 
yourself by the side of a clear and shallow pool of water, and you cannot 
fail to observe at the bottom little oblong moving masses, resembling 
pieces of straw, wood, or even stone. These are the larve in question, 
well known to fishermen by the title of Caddis-worms, and which, if you 
take them out of the water, you will observe to inhabit cases of a very 
singular conformation. Of the larva itself, which somewhat resembles 
the caterpillars of many Lepidoptera, nothing is to be seen but the head 
and six legs, by means of which it moves itself in the water, and drags 
after it the case in which the rest of the body is inclosed, and into which 
on any alarm it wholly retires. ‘The construction of these habitations is 
very various. Some select four or five pieces of the leaves of grass, which 
they glue together into a shapely polygonal case ; others employ portions 
of the stems of rushes, placed side by side, so as to form an elegant fluted 
cylinder ; some arrange round them pieces of leaves like a spirally-rolled 
ribbon ; others inclose themselves in a mass of the leaves of any aquatic 
plants united without regularity ; and others again form their abode of 
minute pieces of ‘wood either fresh or decayed.? One, like the Sabelle®, 
forms a horn-shaped case composed of grains of sand, so equal in size, 
and so nicely and regularly gummed together, the sides throughout being 
of the thickness of one grain only, that the first time I viewed it I could 
scarcely persuade myself it could be the work of an insect. The case of 
Leptocerus bimaculatus, which is less artificially constructed of a mixture 
of mud and sand, is pyriform, and has its end curiously stopped by a plate 
formed of grains of sand, with a central aperture. Other species con- 
struct houses which may be called alive, forming them of the shells of 
various aquatic snails of different kinds and sizes, even while inhabited, 


1 Reaum. iii. 130. " ® Reaum. iii. 156—159. 
3 Sowerby’s Nat. Miscell. No. ix. t. 51. 4 De Geer, ii. 564. 


300 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


all of which are immoveably fixed to it, and dragged about at its pleasure 
—a covering as singular as if a savage, instead of élothing himself with 
squirrels’ skins, should sew together into a coat the animals themselves, 
However various may be the form of the case externally, within it is 
usually cylindrical, and lined with silk; and though seldom apparently 
wider than just to admit the body of the insect, some species have the 
power of turning round in it, and of putting out their head at either end.’ 
Some larve constantly make their cases of the same materials ; others 
employ indifferently any that are at hand ; and the new ones which they 
construct as they increase in size (for they have not the faculty, like the 
larva of the moth, of enlarging them) have often an appearance quite 
dissimilar to that of the old. Even those that are most careless about the 
nature of the materials of their house are solicitously attentive to one 
circumstance respecting them, namely, their specific gravity. Not having 
the power of swimming, but only of walking at the bottom of the water 
by aid of the six legs attached to the fore part of the body, which is 
usually protruded out of the case, and the insect itself being heavier than 
water, it is of great importance that its house should be of a specific 
gravity so nearly that of the element in which it resides, as while walking 
neither to incommode it by its weight, nor by too great buoyancy ; and it 
is as essential that it should be so equally ballasted in every part as to be 
readily moveable in any position. Under these circumstances our caddis- 
worms evince their proficiency in hydrostatics, selecting the most suitable 
substances; and, if the cell be too heavy, glueing to it a bit of leaf or 
straw ; or,if too light,a shell or piece of gravel. It is from this necessity 
of regulating the specific gravity, that to the cases formed with the greatest 
regularity we often see attached a seemingly superfluous piece of wood, 
leaf, or the like.” 

A larva of one of the aquatic Tipularie lives in cases somewhat 
similar to those of some Phryganee. Several of these of a fusiform 
shape, and brown color, composed partly of silk, and partly perhaps of 
fragments of leaves, and inhabited by a red larva, apparently of a Chiro- 
nomus, were found by Reaumur upon dead leaves in a pool of water in 
the Bois de Boulogne.? 

In concluding this head I may observe, that here might have been 
described the various abodes which solitary larve prepare for themselves 
previous to assuming the pupa, and intended for their protection in that 
defenceless stage of existence ; but as I shall have occasion again to refer 
to them in speaking of the larva state of insects, I shall defer their deserip- 
tion to that letter, to which they more strictly belong. 


From the next division of the habitations of insects, those formed by 
solitary perfect insects for their own accommodation, I shall select for 
description only two, both the work of spiders, and alluded to in a former 
letter ; which indeed, with the exception of the inartificial retreats made 


1 De Geer, ii. 564. 

* For a description of various other habitations of this tribe, and of peculiarities in their 
construction, see M. Pictet’s valuable work, Recherches pour servir a Histoire et & l Anatomie 
des Phryganides, in which the Linnean genus Phryganea is divided into seven genera, and 
the metamorphoses of fifty-two species are described. 

3 Reaum. iii. 179. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 301 


by the Grylli, Cicindele, and a few others, are the only ones properly 
belonging to it. 

The habitation of one of these (Cteniza cementaria) is subterraneous ; 
not a mere shallow cavity, but a tube or gallery upwards of two feet in 
length, and half an inch broad. This tunnel, so vast compared with the 
size of the insect, it digs by means of its strong jaws in a steep bank of 
bare clay, so that the rain may readily run off without penetrating to ifs 
dwelling. Its next operation is to line the whole from top to bottom with 
a web of fine silk, which serves the double purpose of preventing the 
earth that composes the walls from falling in, and, by its connection with 
the door of the orifice, of giving information to the spider of what is pass- 
ing above. You doubtless suppose that in saying door, I am speaking 
metaphorically. It could never enter into your conception that any 
animal, much less an insect, could construct any thing really deserving of 
that name—any thing like our doors, turning upon a hinge, and accurately 
fitted to the frame of the opening which it is intended to close. Yet 
such a door, incredible as it may seem, is actually framed by this: spider. 
It does not, indeed, like us, compose it of wood, but of several coats of 
dried earth fastened to each other with silk. When finished, its outline is 
as perfectly circular as if traced with compasses ; the inferior surface is 
convex and smooth, the superior flat and rough, and so like the adjoining 
earth as not to be distinguishable from it. ‘This door the ingenious artist 
fixes to the entrance of her gallery by a hinge of silk, which plays with 
the greatest freedom, and allows it to be opened and shut with ease; and, 
as if acquainted with the laws of gravity, she invariably fixes the hinge at 
the highest side of the opening, so that the door when pushed up shuts 
again by its own weight. She has not less sagaciously left a little edge 
or groove just within the entrance, upon which the door closes, and to 
which it fits with such precision that it seems to make but one surface 
with it. Such is the astonishing structure of this little animal’s abode ; 
nor is its defence of its subterraneous cavern less surprising. If an 
observer adroitly insinuates the point of a pin under the edge of the door, 
and elevates it a little, he immediately perceives a very strong resistance. 
What is its cause? The spider, warned by the vibrations of the threads 
which extend from the door to the bottom of her gallery, runs with all 
speed to the door, fastens its legs to it on one side, and on the other to 
the walls, and, turning upon its back, pulls with all its might. Thus the 
door is alternately shut or opened, as the exertions of the observer or of 
the spider prevail. It is easy to guess which will in the end conquer ; 
and the spider, when it finds all resistance ineffectual, betakes itself to 
flight, and retreats. If, to make a further experiment, the observer fastens 
down the door so that it cannot be forced open, the next morning he will 
find a new entrance, with a new door formed at a small distance ; or, if 
he take the door entirely away, another will be constructed in less than 
twelve hours. 

The habitation thus singularly formed and defended is not at all used as 
a snare, but merely as a safe abode for the spider, which hunts its prey at 
night only ; and, when caught, devours it in security at the bottom of its 
den, which is generally strewed with the remains of coleopterous insects.’ 


1 Sauvages Hist. de’ Acad. des Sc. de Paris, 1758, p. 26. 
26 


302 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


From some curious observations of M. Dorthes on this species in the 
second volume of the Linnean Transactions, it appears that both the 
male and the female spider, and as many as thirty young ones, occasion- 
ally inhabit one of these galleries. Mygale Sauwvagesii of Rossi (M. 
fodiens Walck.), which is a distinct species found in Corsica, forms a 
similar habitation, of which M. Audouin has given us an interesting 
description.! 

The galleries just described are the work of European spiders; but 
similar ones are fabricated by Actinopus nidulans, an inhabitant of the 
West India islands, as well as by many other tropical species. I have 
seen one of these, which had been dug out of the earth, in the cabinet of 
Thomas Hall, Esq., F. L. S., that was nearly a foot in length, and above 
an inch in diameter, forming a cylindrical bag of dark-colored silk, closed 
at the bottom, and accurately fitted at the top by a door or lid.” 

The habitation of Argyroneta aquatica, the other spider to which I 
alluded, is chiefly remarkable for the element in which it is constructed 
and the materials that compose it. It is built in the midst of water, and 
formed, in fact, of air! Spiders are usually terrestrial, but this is aquatic, 
or rather amphibious; for though she resides in the midst of water, in 
which she swims with great celerity, sometimes on her belly, but more 
frequently on her back, and is an admirable diver, she not unfrequently 
hunts on shore, and having caught her prey, plunges with it to the bottom 
of the water. Here it is she forms her singular and unique abode. She 
would evidently have but a very uncomfortable time were she constantly 
wet, but this she is sagacious enough to avoid; and by availing herself of 
some well-known philosophical principles, she constructs for herself an 
apartment in which, like the mermaids and sea-nymphs of fable, she 
resides in comfort and security. The following is her process. First she 
spins loose threads in various directions attached to the leaves of aquatic 
plants, which may be called the frame-work of her chamber, and over 
them she spreads a transparent varnish resembling liquid glass, which 
issues from the middle of her spinners, and which is so elastic that it is 
capable of great expansion and contraction ; and if a hole be made in it, 
it immediately closes again. Next she spreads over her belly a pellicle 
of the same material, and ascends to the surface. The precise mode in 
which she transfers a bubble of air beneath this pellicle is not accurately 
known ; but from an observation made by the ingenious author of the 
little work from which this account is abstracted, he concludes that she 
draws the air into her body by the anus, which she presents to the surface 
of the pool, and then pumps it out from an opening at the base of the 
belly between the pellicle and that part of the body, the hairs of which 
keep it extended. Clothed with this aérial mantle, which to the spectator 
seems formed of resplendent quicksilver, she plunges to the bottom, and, 
with as much dexterity as a chemist transfers gas with a gas-holder, intro- 
duces her bubble of air beneath the roof prepared for its reception. 
This manceuvre she repeats ten or twelve times, until at length in about a 
quarter of an hour she has transported as much air as suffices to expand 


' Audouin in Ann. Soc, Ent. de France, ii. 69. 
® See several Memoirs upon this and some allied species by Messrs. Sells, Saunders, and 
Westwood, in the Trans. of the Ent. Soc. of London, vols. ii. and iii. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 303 


her apartment to its intended extent, and now finds herself in possession 
of a little aérial edifice, | had almost said an enchanted palace, affording 
her a commodious and dry retreat in the very midst of the water. Here 
she reposes unmoved by the storms that agitate the surface of the pool, 
and devours her prey at ease and in safety. Both sexes form these lodg- 
ings. Ata particular season of the year the male quits his apartment, 
approaches that of the female, enters it, and enlarging it by the bubble of 
air that he carries with him, it becomes a common abode for the happy 
pair. The spider which forms these singular habitations is one of the 
largest European species, and in some countries not uncommon in stagnant 


pools. 
I am, &c. 


1 Mémoire pour servir & commencer I Histoire des Araignées Aquatiques, 12mo. 


304 


LETTER XV. 
HABITATIONS OF INSECTS—continued. 


Tue habitations of insects which I shall next proceed to describe are 
those formed by the united labor of several individuals. 

The societies which thus combine their operations may be divided into 
two kinds: 1st, those of which the object is simply the conservation of 
the individuals composing them; and 2dly, those whose object is also the 
nurture and education of their young. ‘To the last head belong bees, 
wasps, &c.: to the former the larve of some species of moths, whose 
labors, being the most simple, I shall first describe. 


You cannot fail to have observed in gardens the fruit trees disfigured, 
as you would probably think them, with what at first view seem very 
strong and thick spiders’ webs. If you have bestowed upon these webs 
the slightest attention, you must have likewise remarked that they differ 
very materially in their construction from those spun by spiders, inclosing 
on every side an angular space, and being besides filled with caterpillars. 
These are the larve of Porthesia chrysorrhea, and the web which con- 
tains them is spun by their united labor for the protection of the common 
society. As soon as the cluster of eggs deposited by the parent moth is 
hatched, the young caterpillars, to the number of three or four hundred, 
commence their operations. At first they content themselves by forming 
asort of hammock of the single leaf upon which they find themselves 
assembled, covering it with a root composed of a number of silken threads 
drawn from one edge to the other; and under one or more of these tem- 
porary habitations they reside for a few days, until they are become large 
and strong enough to undertake a more solid and spacious building sufficient 
to contain the whole society. In constructing this new habitation, they 
spin a close silken web round the end of two or three adjoining twigs and 
the leaves attached to them, so as to include the requisite space. They 
are not curious in giving any particular form to the edifice : sometimes it _ 
is flat, often roundish, but always more or less angular. ‘The interior is 
divided by partitions of silk into several irregular apartments, to each of which 
there is left purposely an appropriate door. Within these the caterpillars 
retire at night, or in rainy weather, quitting the nest on fine days, and dis- 
persing themselves over the neighboring leaves, upon which they feed. 
Here, too, they repose during the critiaal period of the change of their 
skins. On the approach of winter the whole’ community shut themselves 
up in the nest, which, by the addition of repeated layers of silk, has at 
this time become so thick and strong as to be impervious to the wind and 
rain. They remain in a state of torpidity during the cold months, but 
towards the beginning of April are awakened to activity by the genial 
breath of spring, and begin to feed with greediness upon the young leaves 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 305 


that surround their habitation, which, as they soon greatly increase in size, 
they find it necessary to enlarge. One might fear that a structure formed 
of such materials would at this period be sadly damaged by the growth of 
the young shoots and leaves of the twigs which it incloses ; but the inhabi- 
tants, as if to guard against such an accident, have gnawed off all the 
buds within their dwelling, and thus secured themselves from this incon- 
venience.! . 

The nest of the larve of another species of moth, the Cnethocampa 
processionea, unfortunately not a native of this country, to which, on 
account of their singular manners, that will be detailed to you in a subse- 
quent letter, Reaumur has given the title of processionary caterpillars, is 
somewhat different in its construction from that just described, though 
formed of the same material. As the caterpillars which fabricate it feed 
upon the leaves of the oak, it is always found upon this tree, attached not 
to the branches but the trunk, sometimes at a considerable height from the 
ground. In shape it resembles an irregular knob or protuberance, and the 
silk which composes it being of a grey color, at a distance it would 
be taken for a mass of lichens. Sometimes this nest is upwards of 
eighteen inches long, and six broad, rising in the middle about four inches 
from the surface of the tree. Between the trunk and the silken covering, 
a single hole is left which serves for the entrance and exit of the inhabi- 
tants. ‘These differ in their manners from those last mentioned. While 
very young they have no fixed habitation, contenting themselves with a 
succession of different temporary camps until] they have attained two thirds 
of their growth. Then it is they unite their labors in spinning the nest 
just described ; and in this they continue to reside in harmony until they 
become perfect insects, assuming in it even the state of chrysalis.? 

Habitations similar, as to their general structure, to the above, though 
differing in several minute circumstances, are formed by the larve of 
several other moths, as of Porthesia pheorrhea, Clisiocampa neustria, 
&c., as well as those of Vanessa Io, Melitea Cinzia, and some other 
butterflies*, and even of some saw-flies (Serrifera), which, however, have 
each a separate silken covering. But as it would be tedious to describe 
these particularly, I pass on to the habitations formed by insects in their 
perfect state, which have in view the education of their young as well as 
of self-preservation, describing in succession those of ants, bees, wasps, 
and white ants. 


Of these the most simple in their structure are the nests of different 
kinds of ants, many of which externally present the appearance of hillocks 
more or less conical, formed of earth or other substances. 

The nest of the large red or horse ants (F. rufa), which are common 
in woods, at the first aspect seems a very confused mass. Exteriorly it is 
a conical mount composed of pieces of straw, fragments of wood, little 
stones, leaves, grain; in short, of any portable materials within their 
reach. But however rude its outward appearance, and the articles of 


1 Reaum. ii. 128. 2 Reaum. ii. 179. 

3 The habits of a Mexican species of butterfly ( Eucheira socialis Westw.), of which the 
larve construct a strong white parchment-like bag, in which they reside and undergo their 
transformations, have been described by Mr. Westwood in the Trans. of the Ent. Soc. of 
London, vi. pl. vi. a 

26* 


306 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. / 


which it consists, interiorly it presents an arrangement admirably calculated 
at once for protection against the excessive heat ofthe sun, and yet to 
retain a due degree of genial warmth. It is wholly composed of numerous 
small apartments of different sizes, communicating with each other by 
means of galleries and arranged in separate stories, some very deep in the 
earth, others a considerable height above it: the former for the reception 
of the young in cold weather and at night, the latter adapted to their 
use in the daytime. In forming these, the ants mix the earth excavated 
from the bottom of the nest with the other materials of which the mount 
consists, and thus give solidity to the whole. Besides the avenues which 
join the apartments together, other galleries varying in dimensions commu- 
nicate with the outside of the nest at the top of the mount. These open 
doors would seem ill-calculated for precluding the admission of wet or of 
nocturnal enemies: but the ants alter their dimensions continually accord- 
ing to circumstances; and they wholly close them at night, when all 
gradually retire to the interior, and a few sentinels only are left to guard 
the gates. On rainy days, too, they keep them shut, and when the sky is 
cloudy open them partially.! ° 

The habitations of these ants are much larger than those of any other 
species in this country, and sometimes as big as a small haycock ; but 
they are mere molehills when compared with the enormous mounds which 
other species, apparently of the same family, but much larger, construct 
in warmer climates. Malouet states, that in the forests of Guiana, he once 
saw ant-hills which, though his companion would not suffer him to approach 
nearer than forty paces for fear of his being devoured, seemed to him to 
be fifteen or twenty feet high, and thirty or forty in diameter at the base, 
assuming the form of a pyramid, truncated at one third of its height®; 
and Stedman, when in Surinam, once passed ant-hills six feet high, and at 
least one hundred feet in circumference.’ In the plains of Paraguay, 
where the ants commit great devastations, a species described by Dobri- 
zhoffer forms conical earthen nests three or more ells high, and as hard as 
stone ; and in the Bungo forest in New South Wales, a very small ant 
builds nests of indurated clay eight or ten feet high.4 

The nest of Formica brunnea is composed wholly of earth, and consists 
of a great number of stories, sometimes not fewer than forty, twenty 
below the level of the soil, and as many above, which last, following the 
slope of the ant-hill, are concentric. Each story, separately examined, 
exhibits cavities in the shape of saloons, narrower apartments, and long 
galleries which preserve the communication between both. ‘The arched 
roofs of the most spacious rooms are supported by very thin walls, or 
occasionally by small pillars and true buttresses ; some having only one 
entrance from above, others a second communicate with the lower story. 
The main galleries, of which in some places several meet in one large 
saloon, communicating with other subterranean passages, which are often 
earried to the distance of several feet from the hill. These insects work 
chiefly after sunset. In building their nest they employ soft clay only, 
scraped from its bottom when sufficiently moistened by a shower, which, 


? Huber, Recherches sur les Maurs des Fourmis, pp. 21—29. 
2 Thid. p. 168. 3 Stedman’s Surinam, i. 169. 
4 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 223, 231. 


~———- 


—_ 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 307 


far from injuring, consolidates and strengthens their architecture. Different 
laborers convey small masses of this ductile material between their man- 
dibles, and with the same instrument they spread and mould it to their 
will, the antenne accompanying every movement. They render all firm 
by pressing the surface lightly with their fore feet ; and however numerous 
the masses of clay composing these walls, and though connected by no 
glutinous material, they appear when finished one single layer well united 
consolidated, and smoothed. Having traced the plan of their structure, 
by placing here and there the foundations of the pillars and _partition- 
walls, they add successively new portions ; and when the walls of a gal- 
lery or apartment, which are half a line thick, are elevated about half an 
inch in height, they join them by springing a flattish arch or roof from 
one side to the other. Nothing can be a more interesting spectacle than 
one of these cities while building. In one place vertical walls form the 
outline, which communicate with different corridors by openings made in 
the masonry ; in another we see a true saloon, whose vaults are supported 
by numerous pillars; and further on are the cross ways or squares where 
several streets meet, and whose roots, though often more than two inches 
across, the ants are under no difficulty in constructing, beginning the sides 
of the arch in the angle formed by two walls, and extending them by 
successive layers of clay till they meet; while crowds of masons arrive 
from all parts with their particle of mortar, and work with a regularity, 
harmony, and activity, which can never enough be admired. So assiduous 
are they in their operations, that they will complete a story with all its 
saloons, vaulted roofs, partitions, and galleries, in seven or eight hours. If 
they begin a story, and for want of moisture are unable to finish it, they 
pull down again all the crumbling apartments that are not covered in.} 

Another species of ants (’. fusca) are also masons. When they wish 
to heighten their habitations, they begin by covering the top with a thick 
layer of clay, which they transport from the interior. In this layer they 
trace out the plan of the new story, first hollowing out little cavities of 
almost equal depth at different distances from each other, and of a 
size adapted to their purposes. The elevations of earth left between them 
serve for bases to the interior walls, which, when they have removed all 
the loose earth from the floors of the apartments, and reduced the founda- 
tions to a due thickness, they heighten, and lastly cover all in. M. 
Huber saw a single working ant make and cover in a gallery which was 
two or three inches long, and of which the interior was rendered perfectly 
concave, without assistance.” 

The societies of F. fuliginosa make their habitations in the trunks of 
old oaks or willow trees, gnawing the wood into numberless stories more 
or less horizontal, the ceilings and floors of which are about five or six lines 
asunder, black, and as thin as card, sometimes supported by vertical parti- 
tions, forming an infinity of apartments which communicate by small 
apertures ; at others by small light cylindrical pillars furnished with a base 
and capital which are arranged in colonnades, leaving a communication 
perfectly free throughout the whole extent of the story.’ 

Two other tribes of carpenter ants (F. ethiops and F. flava) use saw- 
dust in forming their buildings. The former applies this material only to 


1 Huber, Recherches, &c. 30—40. 2 Thid. 45. 3 Thid. 53. 


308 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. ° 


the building of walls and stopping up chinks: the latter composes whole 
stages or stories of it made into a sort of papier machéwith earth and spi- 
ders’ web. ’ 

Some ants form their nests of the leaves of trees. One of these was 
observed by Sir Joseph Banks in New South Wales, which was formed by 
glueing together several leaves as large as a hand. ‘To keep these leaves 
in a proper position, thousands of ants united their strength, and if driven 
away the leaves spring back with great violence.” Another species of ant 
(Myrmica Kirbwi Sykes), found in the Poona Collectorate, India, described 
by Colonel Sykes, forms its globular battoon-shaped nest, which is com- 
posed of a congeries of tile-like lamine of cow-dung, with the usual 
assemblage of cells and nurseries, &c., composed of the same material, in 
the branches of trees and shrubs.* Another East Indian species (Formica 
smaragdina) forms its nest of a very thin but doubled silk-like tissue*; 
while Formica elata Lund builds its nest on the trunks of trees of earth 
mixed with leaves, and other species use the hairs of plants for the same 
purpose.® FF’. bespinosa in Cayenne employs the down enveloping the 
seeds of the Bombax criba, which it felts into a sort of cottony substance.® 

1 

The most profound philosopher, equally with the most incurious of mor- 
tals, is struck with astonishment on inspecting the interior of a bee-hive. 
He beholds a city in miniature. He sees this city divided into regular 
streets, these streets composed of houses constructed on the most exact 
geometrical principles and the most symmetrical plan, some serving for 
store-houses for food, others for the habitations of the citizens, and a few, 
much more extensive than the rest, destined for the palaces of the sovereign. 
He perceives that the substance of which the whole city is built is one 
which man, with all his skill, is unable to fabricate ; and that the edifices 
in which it is employed are such, as the most expert artist would find him- 
self incompetent to erect. And the whole is the work of a society of 
insects! Quel abime (he exclaims with Bonnet) aux yeux du sage qu'une 
ruche d’Abeilles! Quelle sagesse profonde se cache dans cet abime! 

uel philosophe osera le fonder!’ Nor have its mysteries yet been 
fathomed. Philosophers have in all ages devoted their lives to the subject ; 
from Aristomachus of Soli in Cilicia, who, we are told by Pliny, for fifty- 
eight years attended solely to bees, and Philiscus the Thracian, who spent 
his whole time in forests investigating their manners, to Swammerdam, 
Reaumur, Hunter, and Huber of modern times. Still the construction of 
the combs of a bee-hive is a miracle which overwhelms our faculties. 

You are probably aware that the hives with which we provide bees are 
not essential to their labors, and that they can equally form their city in 
the hollow of a tree or any other cavity. In whatever situation it is placed, 
the general plan which they follow is the same. You have seen a honey- 
comb, and must have observed that it is a flattish cake, composed of a 
vast number of cells, for the most part hexagonal, regularly applied to 
each other’s sides, and arranged in two strata or layers placed end to end. 
The interior of a bee-hive consists of several of these combs fixed to its 

2 Huber, Recherches, &c. 61. * Hawkesworth’s Cook’s Voyages, iii. 223. _ 

3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 101. 4 Ibid. i. proc. lxxit. 


5 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 223. 
6 Lacordaire, Intr. & ? Entom. ii. 503. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 309 


upper part and sides, arranged vertically at a small distance from each 
other, so that the cells composing them are placed in a horizontal position, 
and have their openings in opposite directions—not the best position one 
would have thought for retaining a fluid like honey, yet the bees find no 
inconvenience on this score. ‘The distance of the combs from each other 
is about half an inch, that is, sufficient to allow two bees busied upon the 
opposite cells to pass each other with facility. Besides these vacanciés, 
which form the high roads of their community, the combs are here and 
there pierced with holes which serve as posterns for easy communication 
from one to the other without losing time by going round. 

The arrangement of the combs is well adapted for its purpose, but it is 
the construction of the cells which is most admirable and astonishing. As 
these are formed of wax, a substance secreted by the bees in no great 
abundance, it is important that as little as possible of such a precious ma- 
terial should be consumed. Bees, therefore, in the formation of their cells 
have to solve a problem which would puzzle some geometers, namely, a 
quantity of wax being given, to form of it similar and equal cells of a 
determinate capacity, but of the largest size in proportion to the quantity 
of matter employed, and disposed in such a manner as to occupy in the 
hive the least possible space. Every part of this problem is practically 
solved by bees. If their cells had been cylindrical, which form seems 
best adapted to the shape of a bee, they could not have been applied to 
each other without leaving numberless superfluous vacuities. If the cells 
were made square or triangular, this last objection, indeed, would be 
removed; but besides that a greater quantity of wax would have been 
required, the shape would have been inconvenient to a cylindrical-bodied 
animal. All these difficulties are obviated by the adoption of hexagonal 
cells, which are admirably fitted to the form of the insect, at the same time 
that their sides apply to each other without the smallest vacant intervals. 
Another important saving in materials is gained by making acommon base 
serve for two strata of cells. Much more wax as well as room would have 
been required, had the combs consisted of asingle stratum only. But this 
is not all. The base of each cell is not an exact plane, but is usually 
composed of three rhomboidal or lozenge-shaped pieces, placed so as to form 
a pyramidal concavity. From this form it follows that the base of a cell on 
one side or stratum of the comb is composed of portions of the bases of 
three cells on the other. You will inquire, Where is the advantage of this 
arrangement? First, a greater degree of strength ; and secondly, precisely 
the same as results from the hexagonal sides—a greater capacity with less 
expenditure of wax. Not only has this been indisputably ascertained, but 
that the angles of the base of the cell are exactly those which require the 
smallest quantity of wax. It is obvious that these angles might vary infi- 
nitely; but, by avery accurate admeasurement, Maraldi found that the 
great angles were in general 109° 28’, the smaller ones 70° 32’. Reaumur, 
ingeniously suspecting that the object of choosing these angles from 
amongst so many was to spare wax, proposed to M. Kénig, a skilful geo- 
metrician, who was ignorant of Maraldi’s experiments, to determine by 
calculations what ought to be the angle of a hexagonal cell, with a pyra- 
midal bottom formed of three similar and equal rhomboid plates, so that 


310 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


the least matter possible might enter into its construction. For the solu- 
tion of this problem the geometrician had recourse*to the infinitesimal 
calculus, and found that the great angles of the rhombs should be 109° 
26’, and of the small angles 70° 34’... What a surprising agreement be- 
tween the solution of the problem and the actual admeasurement !? 

Besides the saving of wax effected by the form of the cells, the bees 
adopt another economical plan suited to the same end. ‘They compose 
the bottoms and sides of wax of very great tenuity, not thicker than a 
sheet of writing-paper. But as walls of this thinness at the entrance 
would be perpetually injured by the ingress and egress of the workers, 
they prudently make the margin at the opening of each cell three or four 
times thicker than the walls. Dr. Barclay discovered that, though of such 
excessive tenuity, the sides and bottom of each cell are actually double, 
or, in other words, that each cell is a distinct, separate, and in some mea- 
sure an independent structure, agglutinated only to the neighboring cells, 
and that when the agglutinating substance is destroyed, each cell may be 
entirely separated from the rest.? 

You must not imagine that all the cells of a hive are of precisely similar 
dimensions. As the society consists of three orders of insects differing 
in size, the cells which are to contain the larve of each proportionally 
differ, those built for the males being considerably larger than those which 
are intended for the workers. The abode of the larve of the queen bee 
differs still more. It is not only much larger than any of the rest, but of 
a quite different form, being shaped like a pear or Florence flask, and 
composed of a material much coarser than common wax, of which above 
one hundred times as much is used in its construction as of pure wax in 
that of a common cell. ‘The situation, too, of these cells (for there are 
generally three or four, and sometimes many more, even up to thirty or 
forty, in each hive) is very different from that of the common cells. 
Instead of being in a horizontal they are placed in a vertical direction, 
with the mouth downwards, and are usually fixed to the lower edge of the 
combs, from which they irregularly project like stalactites from the roof of 
acavern. The cells destined for the reception of honey and pollen differ 
from those which the larve of the males and workers inhabit only by 
being deeper, and thus more capacious; in fact, the very same cells are 

1 Reaum. v. 390. 

2 Father Boscovich observes, that all the angles that form the planes which compose the 
cell are equal, z. e. 120°; and he supposes that this equality of inclination facilitates much 
the construction of the cell, which may be a motive for preferring it, as well as economy. 
He shows that the bees do not economize the wax necessary for a flat bottom in’ the con- 
struction of every cell, near so much as MM. Konig and Reaumur thought. 

MacLaurin says, that the difference of a cell with a pyramidal from one with a flat bot- 
tom, in which is comprised the economy of the bees, is equal to the fourth part of six tri- 
angles, which it would be necessary to add to the trapeziums, the faces of the cell, in order 
to make them right angles. 

M. L’Hullier, professor of Geneva, values the economy of the bees at one fifty-one parts 
of the whole expense ; and he shows that it might have been one fifth if the bees had no 
other circumstances to attend to; but he concludes, that if it is not very sensible in every 
cell, it may be considerable in the whole of a comb, on account of the mutual setting of the 
two opposite orders of cells. Huber, Nouvelles Observations, &c. ii. 34. 

3 Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, ii. 259, This, however, has been denied by Mr. 
Waterhouse, and seems inconsistent with the account given by Huber hereafter detailed ; 


buat Mr. G. Newport asserts that even the virgin cells are lined with a delicate membrane. 
(Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 284.) 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 31% 


successively applied to both purposes. When the honey is collected in 
great abundance, and there is not time to construct fresh cells, the bees 
lengthen the honey cells by adding a rim to them. 

You will be anxious to learn the process which these ingenious artificers 
follow in constructing their habitations: and on this head I am happy that 
the recent publication of a new edition of the celebrated Huber’s New 
Observations on Bees, in which this subject is for the first time elucidated, 
will enable me to gratify your curiosity. 

But in the first place you must be told of an important and unlooked- 
for discovery of this unrivalled detector of the hidden mysteries of 
nature—that the workers or neuters, as they are called, of a hive, consist 
of two descriptions of individuals, one of which he calls abeilles nour- 
rices, or petites abeilles, the other abeilles ciriéres. The former, or nurse 
bees, are smaller than the latter; their stomach is not capable of such 
distention ; and their office is to build the combs and cells after the founda- 
tion has been laid by the ciriéres, to collect honey, and to feed the larve. 
The abeilles ciriéres are the makers of wax, which substance Huber has 
now indisputably ascertained to be secreted, as John Hunter long ago 
suspected, beneath the ventral segments, from between which it is taken by 
the bees when wanted, in the form of thin scales. ‘The apparatus in which 
the wax is secreted consists of four pair of membranous bags or wag- 
pockets, situated at the base of each intermediate segment, one on each 
side, which can only be seen by pressing the abdomen so as to lengthen 
it, being usually concealed by the overlapping of the preceding segments. 
It should be observed that this discovery was nearly made by our countryman 
Thorley, who, in his Female Monarchy (1744), says that he has taken 
bees with six pieces of wax within the plaits of the abdomen, three on 
each side. In these pockets the wax is secreted by some unknown process 
from the food taken into the stomach, which in the wax-making bees is 
much larger than in the nurse-bees, and afterwards transpires through the 
membrane of the wax-pocket in thin laminae. The nurse-bees, however, 
do secrete wax, but in very small quantities. When wax is not wanted 
in the hive, the wax-makers disgorge their honey into the cells. 

The process of building the combs in a bee-hive, as observed by 
Huber, is as follows :— , 

The wax-makers, having taken a due portion of honey or sugar, from 
either of which wax can be elaborated, suspend themselves to each other, 
the claws of the forelegs of the lowermost being attached to those of the 
hind pair of the uppermost, and form themselves into a cluster, the exte- 
rior layer of which looks like a kind of curtain. This cluster consists of 
a series of festoons or garlands, which cross each other in all directions, 
and in which most of the bees turn their back upon the observer: the 
curtain has no other motion than what it receives from the interior layers, 
the fluctuations of which are communicated to it. All this time the nurse- 
bees preserve their wonted activity and pursue their usual employments. 
The wax-makers remain immoveable for about twenty-four hours, during 
which period the formation of wax takes place, and thin laminz of this 
material may be generally perceived under their abdomen. One of these 
bees is now seen to detach itself from one of the central garlands of the 
cluster, to make a way amongst its companions to the middle of the vault 


312 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


or top of the hive, and by turning itself round to form a kind of void, in 
which it can move itself freely. It then suspends itSelf to the centre of 
the space, which it has cleared, the diameter of which is about an inch. 
It next seizes one of the lamine of wax with a pincer formed by the 
posterior metatarsus and tibia’, and drawing it from beneath the abdominal 
segment, one of the anterior legs takes it with its claws and carries it to 
the mouth. This leg holds the lamina with its claws vertically, the tongue 
rolled up serving for a support, and by elevating or depressing it at will, 
causes the whole of its circumference to be exposed to the action of the 
mandibles, so that the margin is soon gnawed into pieces, which drop as 
they are detached into the double cavity, bordered with hairs, of the 
mandibles. These fragments, pressed by others newly separated, fall on 
one side of the mouth, and issue from it in the form of a very narrow 
ribband. ‘They are then presented to the tongue, which impregnates them 
with a frothy liquor like a bouillie. During this operation the tongue 
assumes all sorts of forms; sometimes it is flattened like a spatula; then 
like a trowel, which applies itself to the ribband of wax; at other times 
it resembles a pencil terminating in a point. After having moistened the 
whole of the ribband, the tongue pushes it so as to make it re-enter the 
mandibles, but in an opposite direction, where it is worked up anew. 
The liquor mixed with the wax communicates to it a whiteness and opa- 
city which it had not before; and the object of this mixture of bouzllie, 
which did not escape the observation of Reaumur®, is doubtless to give it 
that ductility and tenacity which it possesses in its perfect state. 

The foundress-bee, a name which this first beginner of a comb deserves, 
next applies these prepared parcels of wax against the vault of the hive, 
disposing them with the point of her mandibles in the direction which she 
wishes them to take: and she continues these manceuvres until she has 
employed the whole lamina that she had separated from her body, when 
she takes a second, proceeding in the same manner. She gives herself 
no care to compress the molecules of wax which she has heaped together ; 
she is satisfied if they adhere to each other. At length she leaves her 
work, and is lost in the crowd of her companions. Another succeeds, 
and resumes the employment; then a third; all follow the same plan of 
placing their little masses ; and if any by chance gives them a contrary 
direction, another coming removes them to their proper place. The result 
of all these operations is a mass or little wall of wax with uneven surfaces, 
five or six lines long, two lines high, and half a line thick, which descends 
perpendicularly below the vault of the hive. In this first work is no 
angle nor any trace of the figure of the cells. It is a simple partition in 
a right line without any inflection. 

The wax-makers having thus laid the foundation of a comb, are suc- 
ceeded by the nurse-bees, which are alone competent to model and perfect 
the work. The former are the laborers, who convey the stone and 
mortar; the latter the masons, who work them up into the form which the 
intended structure requires. One of the nurse-bees now places itself 
horizontally on the vault of the hive, its head corresponding to the centre 
of the mass or wall which the wax-makers have left, and which is to form 
the partition of the comb into two opposite assemblages of cells; and 


1 Vide Mon. Ap. Ang. t. 12. ** e. 1. neut. fig. 19. ? Reaum. v. 424. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 313 


with its mandibles, rapidly moving its head, it moulds in that side of the 
wall a cavity which is to form the base of one of the cells, to the diam- 
eter of which it is equal. When it has worked some minutes it departs, 
and another takes its place, deepening the cavity, heightening its lateral 
margins by heaping up the wax to right and left by means of its teeth 
and fore-feet, and giving them a more upright form. More than twenty 
bees successively employ themselves in this work. When arrived at a 
certain point, other bees begin on the yet untouched and opposite side of 
the mass, and commencing the bottom of two cells, are in turn relieved 
by others. While still engaged in this labor, the wax-makers return and 
add to the mass, augmenting its extent every way, the nurse-bees again 
continuing their operations. After having worked the bottoms of the 
cells of the first row into their proper forms, they polish them and give 
them their finish, while others begin the outline of a new series. 

The cells themselves, or prisms, which result from the re-union and 
meeting of the sides, are next constructed. ‘These are engrafted on the 
borders of the cavities hollowed in the mass. ‘The bees begin them by 
making the contour of the bottoms, which at first is unequal, of equal 
height: thus all the margins of the cells offer an uniformly level surface 
from their first origin, and until they have acquired their proper length. 
The sides are heightened in an order analogous to that which the insects 
follow in furnishing the bottoms of the cells; and the length of these 
tubes is so perfectly proportioned that there is no observable inequality 
between them. It is to be remarked, that though the general form of the 
cells is hexagonal, that of those first begun is pentagonal, the side next 
the top of the hive, and by which the comb is attached, being much 
broader than the rest ; whence the comb is more strongly united to the 
hive than if these cells were of the ordinary shape. It of course follows 
that the base of these cells, instead of being formed, like those of the 
hexagonal cells, of three rhomboids, consists of one rhomboid and two 
trapeziums. 

The form of a new comb is lenticular, its thickness always diminishing 
towards the edges. This gradation is constantly observable whilst it 
keeps enlarging in circumference ; but as soon as the bees get sufficient 
space to lengthen it, it begins to lose this form, and to assume parallel 
surfaces: it has then received the shape which it will always preserve. 

The bees appear to give the proper forms to the bottoms of the cells 
by means of their antenne, which extraordinary organs they seem to 
employ as directors by which their other instruments are instructed to 
execute a very complex work. They do not remove a single particle of 
wax until the antenne have explored the surface that is to be sculptured. 
By the use of these organs, which are so flexible and so readily applied 
to all parts, however delicate, that they can perform the functions of 
compasses in measuring very minute objects, they can work in the dark, 
and raise those wonderful combs the first production of insects. 

Every part of the work appears a natural consequence of that which 
precedes it, so that chance has no share in the admirable results witnessed. 
The bees cannot depart from their prescribed route, except in consequence 
of particular circumstances which alter the basis of their labor. The 
original mass of wax is never augmented but by an uniform quantity ; 


27 


314 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


and what is most astonishing, this augmentation is made by the wax- 
makers, who are the depositaries of the primary matfer, and possess not 
the art of sculpturing the cells. 

The bees never begin two masses for combs at the same time; but 
scarcely are some rows of cells constructed in the first, when two other 
masses, one on each side of it, are established at equal distances from it 
and parallel to it, and then again two more exterior to these. The 
combs are always enlarged and lengthened in a progression proportioned 
to the priority of their origin ; the middle comb being constantly advanced 
beyond the two adjoining ones by some rows of cells, and they beyond 
those that are exterior to them. Was it permitted to these insects to lay 
the foundation of all their combs at the same time, they could not be 
placed conveniently or parallel to each other. So with respect to the 
cells, the first cavity determines the place of all that succeed it. 

A large number of bees work at the same time on the same comb ; but 
they are not moved to it by a simultaneous but by a successive impulse. 
A single bee begins every partial operation, and many others in succes- 
sion add their efforts to hers, each appearing to act individually in a direc- 
tion impressed either by the workers who have preceded it, or by the 
condition in which it finds the work. ‘The whole population of wax- 
makers is in a state of the most complete inaction till one bee goes forth 
to lay the foundations of the first comb. Immediately others second her 
intentions, adding to the height and length of the mass; and when they 
cease to act, a bee, if the term may be used, of another profession, one of 
the nurse-bees, goes to form the draft of the first cell, in which she is 
succeeded by others.? 

The diameters of the cells intended for the larve of workers is always 
22 lines, that of those meant for the larve of the males or drones 33 lines. 
The male cells are generally in the middle of the combs, or in their sides ; 
rarely in their upper part. ‘They are never insulated, but form a corres- 
ponding group on both sides of the comb. When the bees form male 
cells below those of neuters, they construct many rows of tntermedtate 
ones, the diameter of which augments progressively till it attains that of 
a male cell; and they observe the same method when they revert from 
male cells to those of neuters. It appears to be the oviposition of the 
queen which decides the kind of cells that are to be made: while she lays 
the eggs of workers, no male cells are constructed ; but when she is about 
to lay the eggs of males, the neuters appear to know it,.and act accord- 
ingly. When there is a very large harvest of honey, the bees increase 
the diameter and even the length of their cells. At this time many 
irregular combs may be seen with cells of twelve, fifteen, and even 
eighteen lines in length. Sometimes, also, they have occasion to shorten 


1 Some late physiologists and entomologists have contended with Buffon that there is in 
fact nothing wonderful in the hexagonal form of the cells of bees, which are at first really 
cylindrical (thus corresponding with the form of their bodies), but forced to assume the six 
sided form by the pressure on their sides of the multitude of bees engaged upon them; but 
surely if these authors had read Huber’s work with attention they must have perceived that 
the fact stated by him above, that however large the number of bees at work on a comb, 
they do not work simultaneously, but successively, “each appearing to act individually ina 
direction impressed either by the workers who have preceded it, or by the condition in which 
it finds the work,” is utterly at variance with their theory, as is indeed the whole of Huber’s 
lucid and distinct relation. 


- 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 315 


the cells. When they wish to lengthen an old comb, the tubes of which 
have acquired their full dimensions, they gradually diminish the thickness 
of its edges, gnawing down the sides of the cells till it assumes the lenti- 
cular form: ‘they then engraft a mass of wax round it, and so proceed 
with new cells. 

Variations, as has been already hinted, sometimes take place in the 
position and even form of the combs. Occasionally the bees consttuct 
cells of the common shape upon the wood to which the combs are fixed, 
without pyramidal bottoms, and from them continue their work as usual. 
These cells with a flat bottom, or rather with the wood for their bottom, 
are more irregular than the common ones; some of their orifices are not 
angular; and their dimensions are not exact, but all are more or less 
hexagonal. Once when disturbed, Huber observed them to begin their 
combs on one of the vertical sides of the hive instead of on the roof. 
When particular circumstances caused it, as, for instance, when glass was 
introduced, to which they do not like to fix their combs, he remarked that 
they constantly varied their direction ; and by repeating the attempt, he 
forced them to form their combs in the most-fantastic manner. Yet glass 
is an artificial substance, against which instinct merely cannot have 
provided them: there is nothing in hollow trees, their natural habitation, 


resembling it. When they change the direction of their combs, they 


enlarge the cells of one side to two or three times the diameter of those 
of the other, which gives the requisite curve. 

To complete the detail of these interesting discoveries of the elder 
Huber, I must lay before you the following additional observations of 
his son. 

The first base of the combs upon which the bees work holds three or 
four cells, sometimes more. The comb continues of the same width for 
three or four inches, and then begins to widen for three quarters of its 
length. The bees engaged at the bottom lengthen it downwards ; those 
on the sides widen it to right and left; and those which ‘are employed 
above the thickest part extend its dimensions upwards. ‘The more a 
comb is enlarged below, the more it is necessary that it should be enlarged 
upwards to the top of the hive. The bees that are engaged in lengthen- 
ing the comb work with more celerity than those which increase its width ; 
and those that ascend or increase its width upwards, more slowly than the 
rest. Hence it arises that it is longer than wide, and narrower towards 
the top than towards the middle. The first formed cells are usually not 
so deep as those in the middle ; but when the comb is of a certain height, 
they are in haste to lengthen these cells so essential to the solidity of the 
whole, sometimes even making them longer than the rest. The cells are 
not perfectly horizontal ; they are almost always a little higher towards 
their mouth than at their base, so that their axis is not perpendicular to 

he partition that separates the two assemblages. They sometimes vary 
from the horizontal line more than 20°, usually 4° or 5°. When the bees 
enlarge the diameter of the cells preparatory to the formation of male 
cells, the bottoms often consist of two rhomboids and two hexagons, the 
size and form of which vary, and they correspond with four instead of 
three opposite cells. The works of bees are symmetrical less perhaps in 
minute details than' considered as a whole. Sometimes, indeed, their 


316 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


combs have a fantastic form; but this, if traced, will be found to be 
caused by circumstances: one irregularity occasions another, and both 
usually have their origin in the dispositions which we make them adopt. 
The inconstancy of climate, too, occasions frequent intereuptions, and 
injures the symmetry of the combs ; for a work resumed is always less 
perfect than one followed up until completed. 

At first the substance of the cells is of a dead white, semi-transparent, 
soft, and though even, not smooth: but ina few days it loses most of these 
qualities, or rather acquires new ones; a yellow tint spreads over the cells, 
particularly their interior surface: their edges become thicker, and they 
have acquired a consistence, which at first they did not possess. The 
combs, also, when finished are heavier than the unfinished ones: these last 
are broken by the slightest touch, whereas the former will bend sooner 
than break. ‘Their orifices also have something adhesive, and they melt 
less readily ; whence it is evident that the finished combs contain some- 
thing not present in the unfinished ones. In examining the orifice of the 
yellow cells, their contour appeared to the younger Huber to be besmeared 
with a reddish varnish, unctuous, strong-scented, and similar to, if not the 
same as, propolis. Sometimes there were red threads in the interior, 
which were also applied round the sides, rhombs, or trapeziums. This 
solder, as it may be called, placed at the point of contact of the different 
parts, and at the summit of the angles formed by their meeting, seemed to 
give solidity to the cells, round the axis of the longest of which there were 
sometimes one or two red zones. From subsequent experiments, M. 
Huber ascertained that this substance was actually propolis, collected from 
the buds of the poplar. He saw them with their mandibles draw a thread 
from the mass of propolis that was most conveniently situated, and break- 
ing it by a sudden jerk of the head, take it with the claws of their fore- 
legs, and then, entering the cell, place it at the angles and sides, &c., 
which they had previously planished. The yellow color, however, is not 
given by the propolis, and it is not certain to what itis owing. The bees 
sometimes mix wax and propolis and make an amalgam, known to the 
ancients and called by them mitys and pissoceros, which they use in 
rebuilding cells that have been destroyed, in order to strengthen and sup- 
port the edifice.’ 

We know but little of the proceedings of the species of bees not 
indigenous to Europe, which live in societies and construct combs like that 
cultivated by us. A traveler in Brazil mentions one there which builds a 
kind of natural hive: “On an excursion towards upper Tapagippe,” says 
he, “and skirting the dreary woods which extend to the interior, I 
observed the trees more loaded with bees’ nests than even in the neigh- 
borhood of Porto Seguro. They consist of a ponderous shell of clay, 
cemented similarly to martins’ nests, swelling from high trees about a foot 
thick, and forming an oval mass full two feet in diameter. When broken, 
the wax is arranged as in our hives, and the honey abundant.* 


Humble-bees are the only tribe besides the hive-bee, that in this part of 


; Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles, par Francois Huber, ii. 101—288. I have observed 
the bees collecting propolis in the spring from the buds of Populus balsamifera. 
2 Lindley in R. Military Chronicle, March 1815, 449. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 317 


the world construct nests by the united labor of the society. The habita- 
tions composing them are of a rude construction, and the streets are 
arranged with little architectural regularity. ‘The number of inhabitants, 
too, is small, rarely exceeding two or three hundred, and often not more 
than twenty. The nests of some species, as of Bombus' lapidarius, 
terrestris, &c., are found underground, at the depth of a foot or more below 
the surface; but as the internal structure of these does not essentially 
differ from that of the more singular habitations of B. muscorum, and as 
some of the subterranean species occasionally adopt the same situation, I 
shall confine my description to the latter. 

These nests, which do not exceed six or eight inches in diameter, are 
generally found in meadows and pastures, and sometimes in hedge-rows 
where the soil is entangled with roots. ‘The lower half occupies a cavity 
in the soil, either accidentally found ready made, or excavated with great 
labor by the bees. The upper part or dome of the nest is composed of a 
thick felted covering of moss, having the interior ceiling coated with a thin 
roof of coarse wax for the purpose of keeping out the wet. The entrance 
is in the lower part, and is generally through a gallery or covered way, 
sometimes more than a foot in length and half an inch in diameter, by 
means of which the nest is more effectually concealed from observation. 
On removing the coping of moss, the interior presents to our view a very 
different scene from that witnessed in a bee-hive. Instead of numerous 
vertical combs of wax, we see merely a few irregular horizontal combs 
placed one above the other, the uppermost resting upon the more elevated 
parts of the lower, and connected together by small pillars of wax. 
Each of these combs consists of several groups of pale-yellow oval bodies 
of three different sizes, those in the middle being the largest, closely 
joined to each other, and each group connected with those next it by 
slight joinings of wax. These oval bodies are not, as you might suppose, 
the work of the old bees, but the silken cocoons spun by the young larve. 
Some are closed at the upper extremity ; others, which chiefly occupy the 
lower combs, have this part open. The former are those which yet 
include their immature tenants ; the latter are the empty cases from which 
the young bees have escaped. On the surface of the upper comb are 
seen several masses of wax of a flattened spheroidal shape, and of very 
various dimensions: some above an inch, and others not a quarter of an 
inch, in diameter; which, on being opened, are found to include a number 
of larve surrounded with a supply of pollen moistened with honey, 
These, which are the true cells, are chiefly the work of the female, which, 
after depositing her eggs in them, furnishes them with a store of pollen 
and honey ; and, when this is consumed, supplies the larve with a daily 
provision, as has been described in a former letter, until they are sufficiently 
grown to spin the cocoons before spoken of. Lastly, in all the corners of 
the combs, and especially in the middle, we observe a considerable number 
of small goblet-like vessels, filled with honey and pollen, which are not, 
as in the case of the hive-bee, the fabrication of the workers, but are 
chiefly the empty cocoons left by the larve. It falls to the workers, how- 
ever, to cut off the fragments of silk from the orifice of the cocoon, which, 
after giving it a regular circular form, they strengthen by a ring or elevated 


1 Apis. **. e, 2. K. 
Q7* 


318 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


tube of wax made in a different shape by different species; and to coat 
them internally with a lining of the same material. “They even oceasion- 
ally construct honey-pots entirely of wax." 

The most curious circumstance in the construction of these nests is the 
mode in which the bees transport the moss employed in forming the roof. 
When they have discovered a parcel of this material conveniently situated 
upon the ground, five or six insects place themselves upon it in a file, turn- 
ing the hinder part of their bodies towards the quarter to which it is 
meant to be conveyed. ‘The first takes a small portion, and, with its jaws 
and fore-legs, as it were felts it together. When the fibres are sufficiently 
entangled, it pushes them under its body by means of the first pair of, 
legs ; the intermediate pair receives the moss, and delivers it to the last, 
which protrudes it as far as possible beyond the anus. When by this 
process the insect has formed behind it a small ball of well-carded moss, 
the next bee pushes it to the third, which consigns it, in like manner, to 
that behind it; and thus the balls are conveyed to the foot of the nest, 
and from thence elevated to the summit, much in the same way that a file 
of laborers transfer a parcel of cheeses from a vessel or cart to a ware- 
house.? It is easy to perceive that a vast saving of time must ensue from 
this well contrived division of labor; the structure rising much more 
rapidly than if every individual had been employed first in carding his 
materials, and then in transferring them to the spot. 

Wasps, though ferocious and cruel towards their fellow-insects, are civiliz~ 
ed and polished in their intercourse with each other, and form a community 
whose architectural labors will not suffer on comparison even with those 
of the peaceful inhabitants of a bee-hive. Like these, the great object 
of their industry is the erection of a structure for their beloved progeny, 
towards which they discover the greatest tenderness and affection, and 
they even, in like manner, construct combs consisting of hexagonal cells 
for their reception ; but the substance which they make use of is very 
dissimilar to the wax employed by bees; and the general plan of their 
city differs in many respects from that of a bee-hive. 

The common wasp’s nest, usually situated in a cavity underground, is 
of an oval figure, about sixteen or eighteen inches long by twelve or thir- 
teen broad. Externally, it is surrounded by a thick ccating of numerous 
leaves of a sort of greyish paper, which do not touch each other, but have 
a small interval between each, so that if the rain should chance to pene- 
trate one or two of them, its progress is speedily arrested. On removing 
this external covering, we perceive that the interior consists of from twelve 
to fifteen circular combs of different sizes, not ranged vertically as in a 
bee-hive, but horizontally, so as to form so many distinct and parallel 
stories. Each comb is composed of numerous assemblage of hexagonal 
cells formed of the same paper-like substance as the exterior covering of 
the nest, and, according to Dr. Barclay, each, as in those of bees, a 
distinct cell, the partition walls being double. These cells, which, as 
wasps do not store up any food, serve merely as the habitations of their 
young, are not, like those of the honey-bee, arranged in two opposite 


1 Huber, Linn, Trans. vi. 215—298. 2 Reaum. vi. 7—10. 
3 Memvirs of the Wernerian Society, ii. 260. 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 319 


layers, but in one only, their entrance being always downwards: conse- 
quently the upper part of the comb, composed of the bases of the cells, 
which are not pyramidal but slightly convex, forms a nearly level floor, 
on which the inhabitants can conveniently pass and repass, spaces of about 
half an inch high being left between each comb. Although the combs 
are fixed to the sides of the nest, they would not be sufficiently strong 
without further support. The ingenious builders, therefore, connect each 
comb to that below it by a number of strong cylindrical columns or pillars, 
having, according to the rules of architecture their base, and capital 
wider than the shaft, and composed of the same paper-like material used 
in other parts of the nest, but of a more compact substance. ‘The middle 
combs are connected by a rustic colonnade of from forty to fifty of these 
pillars; the upper and lower combs by a smaller number. 

The cells, which in a populous nest are not fewer than 16,000, are 
of different sizes, corresponding to that of the three orders of individuals 
which compose the community ; the largest for the grubs of females, the 
smallest for those of workers. The last always occupy an entire comb, 
while the cells of the males and females are often intermixed.—Besides 
openings which are left between the walls of the combs to admit of access 
from one to the other, there are at the bottom of each nest two holes, by 
one of which the wasps uniformly enter, and through the other issue from 
the nest, and thus avoid all confusion or interruption of their common 
labors. As the nest is often a foot and a half under ground, it is requisite 
that a covered way should lead to its entrance. ‘This is excavated by the 
wasps, who are excellent miners, and is often very long and tortuous, 
forming a beaten road to the subterranean city, well known to the inhabit- 
ants, though its entrance is concealed from incurious eyes. The cavity 
itself, which contains the nest, is either the abandoned habitation of moles 
or field-mice, or a cavern purposely dug out by the wasps, which exert 
themselves with such industry as to accomplish the arduous undertaking in 
a few days. 

When the cavity and entrance to it are completed, the next part of the 
process is to lay the foundations of the city to be included in it, which, 
contrary to the usual custom of builders, wasps begin at the top, continu- 
ing downwards. I have already told you that the coatings which compose 
the dome are a sort of rough but thin paper, and that the rest of the nest 
is composed of the same substance variously applied. ‘‘ Whence,” you 
will inquire, “do the wasps derive it?” They are manufacturers of the 
article, and prepare it from a material even more singular than any of 
those which have of late been proposed for this purpose; namely, the 
fibres of wood.' These they detach by means of their jaws from window- 
frames, posts, and rails, &c., and when they have amassed a heap of the 
filament, moisten the whole with a few drops of a viscid glue from their 
mouth, and, kneading it with their jaws into a sort of paste or papier 
mdché, fly off with it to their nest. This ductile mass they attach to that 
part of the building upon which they are at work, walking backwards 
and spreading it into lamine of the requisite thinness by means of their 


1 Reaumur says decaying wood, vi. 182.; but White asserts (and my own observations 
confirm his opinion) that wasps obtain. their paper from sound timber; hornets, only from 
that which is decayed. White’s Nat. Hist. by Marwick, ii. 228, 


320 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


jaws, tongue, and legs. This operation is repeated seyeral times, until at 
length, by aid of fresh supplies of the material and ‘the combined exer- 
tion of so many workmen, the proper number of layers of paper that 
are to compose the roof is finished. ‘This paper is as thin as that of the 
letter which you are reading; and you may form an idea of the labor 
which even the exterior of a wasp’s nest requires, on being told that not 
fewer than fifteen or sixteen sheets of it are usually placed above each 
other with slight intervening spaces, making the whole upwards of an 
inch and a half in thickness. When the dome is completed, the upper- 
most comb is next begun, in which, as well as all the other parts of the 
building, precisely the same material and the same process, with little 
variation, are employed. In the structure of the connecting pillars, there 
seems a greater quantity of glue made use of than in the rest of the work, 
doubtless with the view of giving them a superior solidity. When the 
first comb is finished, the continuation of the roof or walls of the building is 
brought down lower; a new comb is erected; and thus the work succes- 
sively proceeds until the whole is finished. As a comparatively small 
proportion of the society is engaged in constructing the nest, its entire 
completion is the work of several months: yet, though the fruit of such 
severe labor, it has not been finished many weeks before winter comes on, 
when it merely serves’ for the abode of a few benumbed females, and is 
entirely abandoned at the approach of spring; wasps never using the 
same nest for more than one season.’ 

The nests of the hornet in their general construction resemble those of 
the common wasp, but the paper of which they are composed is of a 
much more rough texture ; the columns which support the comb are higher 
and more massive, and that in the centre larger than the rest. 

These last, as well as wasps, conceal their nest, suspending it in the 
corners of out-houses, &c.; but there are other species which construct 
their habitations in open daylight, affixing them to the branches of shrubs 
or tree. 

One of these, described by Latreille, the work of Vespa holsatica, a 
species not uncommon with us, resembles in shape a cone of the cedar of 
Lebanon, and is composed of an envelop and the comb, the former con- 
sisting of three partial envelops. ‘The comb comprises about thirty 
hexagonal cells circularly arranged, those of the circumference being lower 
and smaller.? 

A vespiary somewhat similar to the above, but of a depressed globular 
figure, and composed of more numerous envelops, so as to assume a con- 
siderable resemblance to a half-expanded Provence rose, is figured by 
Reaumur*: and for a very beautiful specimen apparently of the same kind, 
except that it contains but one stage of cells, which was found in the 
garden at East Dale, I am indebted to the kindness of Henry Thompson, 
Esq., of Hull. 

Another species* attaches its small group of about twenty inverted 
crucible-like cells to a piece of wood without any covering®, and similar 


1 Reaum. vi..mémi. 6, 2 Annales du Mus. d’ Hist. Nat. i. 299. 
mom 8, 19. f. 1. 2. 4 Rosel’s Vesp. t. 7. f. 8. 


5 Résel, IL. viii. 30. Descriptions of several other wasps’ nests have been published in 
various works ; but mach uncertainty exists as to the different species forming each, and as 
to how far their apparent dissimilarity has resulted from one having been in a more or less 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS, 321 


nests, having their cells exposed without any general envelop, and fixed 
laterally to the stems of plants, walls, &c., are formed by Polistes gallica, 
and others of the same genus. 

But all these yield in point of singularity of structure to the habitation 
of Chartergus nidulans, a native of Cayenne, which constructs its nest of 
a beautifully polished white and solid pasteboard, impenetrable by the 
weather. These are in shape somewhat like a bell, often a foot and a 
half long, or even more, and fixed by their upper end to the branch of a 
tree from which they are securely suspended. Their interior is composed 
of numerous concave horizontal combs, with the openings of the cells 
turned downwards, fastened to the sides without any pillars, and having a 
hole through each to admit of access to the uppermost.’ A nest con- 
structed on a similar plan, but having its exterior surface beset with 
numerous conical knobs, is constructed by another South American wasp, 
remarkable for collecting honey, for a valuable article on which we are 
indebted to Mr. Adam White, who has named it Myrapetra scutellaris.? 


I close my account of the habitations of insects with the description of 
those constructed by the white ants, or Termites, a tribe alluded to in 
former letters. 

The different species, which are numerous, build nests of various forms. 
Some (J. atrox and mordax) construct upon the ground a cylindrical 
turret of clay about three quarters of a yard high, surrounded by a project- 
ing conical roof, so as in shape considerably to resemble a mushroom, and 
composed interiorly of innumerable cells of various figures and dimen- 
sions. Others (as J. destructor, T’. arborum Sm.) prefer a more elevated 
site, and build their nests, which are of different sizes, from that of a hat 
to that of a sugar-cask, and composed of pieces of wood glued together, 
amongst the branches of trees often seventy or eighty feet high. But by 
far the most curious habitations, and to which, therefore, I shall confine a 
minute description, are those formed by the Termes fatalis, a species 
very common in Guinea and other parts of the coast of Africa, of whose 
proceedings we have a very particular and interesting account in the 
71st volume of the Philosophical Transactions, from the pen of Mr. 
Smeathman. 

These nests are formed entirely of clay, and are generally twelve feet 
high and broad in proportion, so that when a cluster of them, as is often 
the case, are placed together, they may be taken for an Indian village, 
and are in fact sometimes larger than the huts which the natives inhabit. 
The first process in the erection of these singular structures is the eleva- 
tion of two or three turrets of clay about a foot high, and in shape like a 
sugar-loaf. ‘These, which seem to be the scaffolds of the future building, 
rapidly increase in number and height, until at length being widened at 
the base, joined at the top into one dome, and consolidated all round 
into a thick wall of clay, they form a building of the size above men- 
tioned, and of the shape of a hay-cock, which when clothed, as it 
generally soon becomes, with a coating of grass, it at a distance very much 


forward state than another. See Westwood’s Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 250., and Shuckard’s 
Notes on the Pensile Nests of British Wasps in Mag. Nat. Hist. iii. 458. 

1 Reaum. vi. 224. Compare Lacordaire, Introd. @ I’ Entom. ii. 508. 

2 Annals of Nat. Hist. vii. 315. 


322 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


resembles. When the building has assumed this its final form, the inner 
turrets, all but the tops, which project like pinnacles from different parts 
of it, are removed, and the clay employed over again in other services. 

It is the lower part alone of the building that is occupied by the inhab- 
itants. The upper portion or dome, which is very strong and solid, is left 
empty, serving principally as a defence from the vicissitudes of the 
weather, and the attacks of natural or accidental enemies, and to keep up 
in the lower part a genial warmth and moisture necessary to the hatecling 
of the eggs and cherishing of the young ones. The inhabited portion is 
occupied by the royal chamber, or habitation of the king and queen, the 
nurseries for the young, the store-houses for food, and innumerable gal- 
leries, passages, and empty rooms, arranged according to the following 
plan. 

In the centre of the building, just under the apex, and nearly on a 
Jevel with the surface of the ground, is placed the royal chamber, an 
arched vault of a semi-oval shape, or not unlike a long oven; at first not 
above an inch long, but enlarged as the queen increases in bulk to the 
length of eight inches or more. In this apartment the king and queen 
constantly reside ; and from the smallness of the entrances, which are barely 
large enough to admit their more diminutive subjects, can never possibly 
come out ; thus, like many human potentates, purchasing their sovereignty 
at the dear rate of the sacrifice of liberty. Immediately adjoining the 
royal chamber, and surrounding it on all sides to the extent of a foot 
or more, are placed what Mr: Smeathman calls the royal apartments, 
an inextricable labyrinth of innumerable arched rooms of different shapes 
and sizes, either opening into each other or communicating by common 
passages, and intended for the accommodation of the soldiers and attend- 
ants, of whom many thousands are always in waiting on their royal master 
and mistress. Next to the royal apartments come the nurseries and the 
magazines. ‘The former are invariably occupied by the eggs and young 
ones, and in the infant state of the nest are placed close to the royal 
chamber ; but when the queen’s augmented size requires a larger apart- 
ment, as well as additional rooms for the increased number of attendants 
wanted to remove her eggs, the small nurseries are taken to pieces, rebuilt 
at a greater distance, a size bigger, and their number increased at the 

same time. In substance they differ from all the other apartments, being 

formed of particles of wood apparently joined together with gums. A 
collection of these compact, irregular, and small wooden chambers, not one 
of which is half an inch in width, is inclosed in a common chamber of 
clay sometimes as big as a child’s head. Intermixed with the nurseries 
lie the magazines, which are chambers of clay always well stored with 
provisions, consisting of particles of wood, gums, and the inspissated juices 
of plants. 

These magazines and nurseries, separated by small empty chambers 
and galleries, ‘which run round them or communicate from one to the other, 
are continued on all sides to the outer wall of the building, and reach up 
within it two thirds or three fourths of its height. They do not, however, 
fill up the whole of the lower part of the hill, but are confined to the 
sides, leaving an open area in the middle, under the dome, very much 
resembling the nave of an old cathedral, having its roof supported by 


HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 323 


three of four very large Gothic arches, of which thosein the middle of 
the area are sometimes two and three feet high, but as they recede on each 
side, rapidly diminish like the arches of aisles in perspective. A flattish 
roof, imperforated in order to keep out the wet, if the dome should chance 
to be injured, covers the top of the assemblage of chambers, nurseries, &c. ; 
and the area, which is a short height above the royal chamber, has a 
flattish floor, also water-proof, and so contrived as to let any rain that may 
chance to get in run off into the subterranean passages. 

These passages or galleries, which are of an astonishing size, some 
being above a foot in diameter and perfectly cylindrical, lined with the 
same kind of clay of which the hill is composed, served originally, like the 
catacombs in Paris, as the quarries whence the materials of the building 
were derived, and afterwards as the grand outlets by which the ‘Termites 
carry on their depredations at a distance from their habitations. They 
run ina sloplng direction under the bottom of the hill to the depth of 
three or four feet, and then branching out horizontally on every side, 
are carried under ground, near to the surface, to a vast distance. At 
their entrance into the interior they communicate with other smaller gal- 
_leries, which ascend the inside of the outer shell in a spiral manner, and, 
winding round the whole building to the top, intersect each other at 
different heights, opening either immediately into the dome in various 
places, and into the lower half of the building, or communicating with 
every part of it by other smaller circular or oval galleries of different diam- 
eters. The necessity for the vast size of the main underground galleries 
evidently arises from the circumstance of their being the great thorough- 
fares for the inhabitants, by which they fetch their clay, wood, water, or 
provision ; and their spiral and gradual ascent is requisite for the easy 
access of the Termites, which cannot but with great difficulty ascend 
a perpendicular. To avoid this inconvenience, in the interior vertical 
parts of the building, a flat pathway, half an inch wide, is often made to 
wind gradually, like a road cut out of the side of a mountain, by which 
they travel with great facility up ascents otherwise impracticable. The 
same ingenious propensity to shorten their labor seems to have given 
birth to a contrivance still more extraordinary. This is a kind of bridge 
of one vast arch, sprung from the floor of the area to the upper apart- 
ments at the side of the building, which answers the purpose of a flight 
of stairs, and must shorten the distance exceedingly in transporting eggs 
from the royal chambers to the upper nurseries, which in some hills would 
be four or five feet in the straightest line, and much more if carried through 
all the winding passages which lead through the inner chambers and 
apartments. Mr. Smeathman measured one of these bridges, which was 
half an inch broad, a quarter of an inch thick, and ten inches long, 
making the side of an elliptic arch of proportionable size, so that it is won- 
derful it did not fall over or break by its own weight before they got it 
joined to the side of the column above. It was strengthened by a small 
arch at the bottom, and had a hollow or groove all the length of the 
upper surface, either made purposely for the greater safety of the passen- 
gers, or else worn by frequent treading. It is not the least surprising cir- 
cumstance attending this bridge, the Gothic arches before spoken of, and 
in general all the arches of the various galleries and apartments, that, as 


324 : HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 


Mr. Smeathman saw every reason for believing, the Termites project their 
arches, and do not, as one would have supposed, excavate them. 
Consider what incredible labor and diligence, accompanied by the 
most unremitting activity and the most unwearied celerity of movement, 
must be necessary to enable these creatures to accomplish, their size con- 
sidered, these truly gigantic works. ‘That such diminutive insects, for 
they are scarcely the fourth of an inch in length, however numerous, 
should, in the space of three or four years, be able to erect a building twelve 
feet high and of a proportionable bulk, covered by a vast dome, adorned 
without by numerous pinnacles and turrets, and sheltering under its ample 
arch myriads of vaulted apartments of various dimensions, and constructed 
of different materials—that they should moreover excavate, in different 
directions and at different depths, innumerable subterranean roads or 
tunnels, some twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, or throw an arch of 
stone over other roads leading from the metropolis into the adjoining 
country to the distance of several hundred feet—that they should project 
and finish the, for them, vast interior stair-cases or bridges lately described— 
and, finally, that the millions necessary to execute such Herculean labors, 
perpetually passing to and fro, should never interrupt or interfere with 
each other, is a miracle of nature, or rather of the Author of nature, far 
exceeding the most boasted works and structures of man: for, did these 
creatures equal him in size, retaining their usual instincts and activity, 
their buildings would soar to the astonishing height of more than half a 
mile, and their tunnels would expand toa magnificent cylinder of more 
than three hundred feet in diameter ; before which the pyramids of Egypt 
and the aqueducts of Rome would lose all their celebrity, and dwindle 
into nothings.'. So that when in the commencement of my last letter I 
promised to introduce you to insects whose labors produced edifices more 
astonishing than those of the mightiest Egyptian monarchs, the pyramids, 
my promise, whatever you then thought of it, was the reverse of hyper- 


bolical. 
I am, &c. 


1 The most elevated of the pyramids of Egypt is not more than 600 feet high, which» 
setting the average height of man at only five feet, is not more than 120 times the height” 
of the workmen employed. Whereas the nests uf the Termites being at least twelve feet 
high, and the insects themselves not exceeding a quarter of an inch in stature, their edifice 
is upwards of 500 times the height of the builders; which, supposing them of human 
dimensions, would be more than half amile. The shaft of the Roman aqueducts was lofty 
enough to permit aman on horseback to travel in them. 


325 


LETTER XVI. 
SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


IMPERFECT SOCIETIES. 


I ser already, and I see it with pleasure, that you will not content your- 
self with being a mere collector of insects. 'To possess a cabinet well 
stored, and to know by what name each described individual which it con- 
tains should be distinguished, will not satisfy the love already grown strong 
in you for my favorite pursuit ; and you now anticipate with a laudable 
eagerness, the discoveries which you may make respecting the history and 
economy of this most interesting department of the works of our Creator. 
{hail with joy this intention to emulate the bright example, and to tread 
in the hallowed steps of Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek, Redi, Malpight, 
Vallisnieri, Ray, Lister, Reaumur, De Geer, Lyonnet, Bonnet, the Hubers, 
&c.; and [L am confident that a man of your abilities, discernment, and 
observation will contribute, in no small degree, to the treasures already 
poured into the general fund by these your illustrious predecessors. 

I feel not a little flattered when you inform me that the details con- 
tained in my late letters relative to this subject have stimulated you to 
this noble resolution. Assure yourself I shall think no labor lost which 
has been the means of winning over to the science I love the exertions of 
a mind like yours. 

But if the’ facts already related, however extraordinary, have had power 
to produce such an effect upon you, what will be the momentum, when I 
lay before you more at large, as I next purpose, the more striking particu- 
lars of the proceedings of insects in society, and show the almost incredibly 
wonderful results of the combined instincts and labors of these minute 
beings? In comparison with these, all that is the fruit of solitary efforts, 
though some of them sufficiently marvelous, appear trifling and insig- 
nificant: as the works of man himself, when they are the product 
of the industry and genius of only one, or a few individuals, though 
they might be regarded with admiration by a being who had seen 
nothing similar before, yet when contrasted with those to which the union 
of these qualities in large bodies has given birth, sink into nothing, and 
seem unworthy of attention. Who would think a hut extraordinary by 
the side of a stately palace, or a small village when in the vicinity of a 
populous and:magnificent city ? 

Insects in society may be viewed under several lights, and their associa- 
tions are for various purposes and of different durations. 

There are societies the object of which is mutual defence; while that 
of others is the propagation of the species. Some form marauding parties, 
and associate for prey and plunder; others meet, as it should seem, under 
certain circumstances, merely for the sake of company ; again, others are 
brought together by accidental causes, and disperse when these cease to 


28 


326 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


operate ; and, finally, others, which may be said to form proper societies, 
are associated for the nurture of their young, and, by the union of their 
labors and instincts, for mutual society, help, and comfort, in erecting or 
repairing their common habitation, in collecting provisions, and in defend- 
ing their fortress when attacked. 

With respect to the duration of the societies of insects, some last only 
during their first or larva state, and are occasionally even restricted to its 
earliest period ; some again only associate in their perfect or imago state ; 
while with others, the proper societies for instance, the association is for life. 
But if I divide societies of insects into perfect and imperfect, it will, I 
think, enable me to give you a clearer and better view of the subject. 
By perfect societies I mean those that are associated in all their states, live 
in a common habitation, and unite their labors to promote a common 
object; and by zmperfect societies, those that are either associated during 
part of their existence only, or else do not dwell in a common habitation, 
nor unite their labors to promote a common object. In the present letter I 
shall confine myself to giving you some account of imperfect societes. 

Imperfect societies may be considered as of five descriptions: associa- 
tions for the sake of company only ; associations of males during the 
season for pairing ; associations formed for the purpose of traveling or emi- 
crating together; associations for feeding together ; and associations that 
undertake some common work. 

The first of these associations consists chiefly of insects in their perfect 
state. The little beetles ‘called whirlwigs (Gyrinus), which may be seen 
clustering in groups under warm banks in every river and every pool, and 
wheeling round and round with great velocity, at your approach dispersing 
and diving under water, but as soon as you retire, resuming their accustom- 
ed movements, seem to be under the influence of the social principle, and 
to form their assemblies for no other purpose than to enjoy together, in the 
sunbeam, the mazy dance. Impelled by the same feeling, in the very 
depth of winter, even when the earth is covered with snow, the tribes of 
Tipularia (usually, but improperly, called gnats) assemble in sheltered 
situations at mid-day, when the sun shines, and form themselves into choirs, 
that alternately rise and fall with rapid evolutions.! To see these little 
aéry beings apparently so full of joy and life, and feeling the entire force 
of the social principle in that dreary season, when the whole animal crea- 
tion appears to suffer, and the rest of the insect tribes are torpid, always 
conveys to my mind the most agreeable sensations. ‘These little creatures 
may always be seen at all seasons amusing themselves with these choral 
dances; which Mr. Wordsworth, in one of his poems*, has alluded to in 
the following beautiful lines :— 


“Nor wanting here to entertain the thought, 
Creatures that in communities exist 
Less, as might seem, for general guardianship 
Or through dependance upon mutual aid, 
Than by participation of delight, 
And a strict love of fellowship combined. 
What other spirit can it be that prompts 
The gilded summer flies to mix and weave 
Their sports together in the solar beam, 
Or in the gloom and twilight hum their joy?” 


1 See also Marwick in White’s Nat. Hist, ii. 256. 2 The Excursion. 


IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 327 


Another association is that of males during the season of pairing. Of 
this nature seems to be that of the cockchafer and fernchafer (Melolontha 
vulgaris and Amphimalla solstitialis), which, at certain periods of the year 
and hours of the day, hover over the summits of the trees and hedges like 
swarms of bees, affording, when they: alight on the ground, a grateful food 
to cats, pigs, and poultry. The males of another root-devouring beetle 
(Hoplia argentea) assemble by myriads before noon in the meadows, 
when in these infinite hosts you will not find even one female.’ After 
-noon the congregation is dissolved, and not a single individual is to be seen 
in the air?: while those of M. vulgaris and A. solstitialis are on the wing 
only in the evening. 

At the same time of the day some of the short-lived Ephemere assem- 
ble in numerous troops, and keep rising and falling alternately in the air, 
so as to exhibit a very amusing scene. Many of these, also, are males. 
They continue this dance from about an hour before sun-set, till the dew 
becomes too heavy or too cold for them. In the beginning of September, 
for two successive years, | was so fortunate as to witness a spectacle of 
this kind, which afforded me a more sublime gratification than any work 
or exhibition of art has power to communicate. The first was in 1811. 
Taking an evening walk near my house, when the sun, declining fast 
‘towards the horizon, shone forth without a cloud, the whole atmosphere 
over and near the stream swarmed with infinite myriads of Ephemera and 
little gnats of the genus Chironomus, which in the sun-beam appeared as 
numerous and more lucid than the drops of rain, as if the heavens were 
showering down brilliant gems. Afterwards, in the following year, one 
Sunday, a little before sun-set, I was enjoying a stroll with a friend at a 
greater distance from the river, when in a field by the road side the same 

pleasing scene was renewed, but in a style of still greater magnificence ; 
* for, from some cause in the atmosphere, the insects at a distance looked 
much larger than they really were. The choral dances consisted princi- 
pally of Ephemera, but there were also some of Chironomi: the former, 
however, being most conspicuous, attracted our chief attention. Alter- 
nately rising and falling, in the full beam they appeared so transparent 
and glorious, that they scarcely resembled any thing material: they 
reminded us of angels and glorified spirits drinking life and joy in the 
effulgence of the Divine favor. The bard of Twickenham, from the 
terms in which his beautiful description of his sylphs is conceived in The 
Rape of the Lock, seems to have witnessed the pleasing scene here 
described :-— 
“ Some to the sun their insect wings unfold, 
Watt on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold; 
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, 
Their fluid bodies half dissolv’d in light ; 
Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, 
Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, 
Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies, 
Where light disports in ever mingling dyes, ; 


While every beam new transient colors flings, 
Colors that change whene’er they wave their wings.” 


1 The females ( Scarabeus argenteus Marsh.) have red legs, and the males (Scarabaeus 
pulverulentus Marsh.) black. 2 Kirby in Linn. Trans. v. 256. 

3 The authors of this work were the witnesses of the magnificent scene here described. 
It was on the second of September. The first was on the ninth of that month. 


a 


328 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


I wish you may have the good fortune next ee be a spectator of 
this all but celestial dance. In the meantime, in May and June, their 
season of love, you may often receive much gratification from observing 
the motions of a countless host of little black flies of the genus Hilara 
(H. maura), which at this period of the year assemble to wheel in aéry 
circles over stagnant waters, with a rush resembling that of a hasty shower 
driven by the wind. 

Here, also, must be noticed the bombadier beetles (Brachinus crepi- 
tans), which, with several others of the same family, are usually found 
together in considerable numbers under stones, &c., and the red field-bugs 
Cimex (Pyrrhocoris) apterus, which, in like manner, have a very social 
propensity, though in both instances we are ignorant of any common 
labors or other motive than the love of society, which can lead them to 
associate. ‘The same may be also said as to the numerous assemblages of 
a moth (Scotophila Tragopoginis), mentioned by M. de Villiers, which 
he finds in July under the bark of willows, ranged side by side, generally 
touching each other, and with the head always turned the same way, and 
which if you disturb them do not attempt to fly, but run upon the backs 
of their companions, which exhibit no marks of alarm.’ 

The next description of insect associations is of those that congregate 
for the purpose of traveling or emigrating together. De Geer has given 
an account of the larve of certain gnats (T%pularie) which assemble in 
considerable numbers for this purpose, so as to form a band of a finger’s 
breadth, and of from one to two yards in length. And, what is remark- 
able, while upon their march, which is very slow, they adhere to each 
other by a kind of glutinous secretion ; but when disturbed they separate 
without difficulty. Kubn mentions another of the same tribe—from the 
antenne in his figure, which is very indifferent, it should seem a species 
of agaric-gnat (Mycetophila),—the larve of which live in society, and 
emigrate in files, like the caterpillar of the procession-moth. First goes 
one, next follow two, then three, &c.,so as to exhibit a serpentine 
appearance, probably from their simultaneous undulating motion, and the 
continuity of the files, whence the common people in Germany call them 
(or rather the file when on march) heerwurm, and view them with great 
dread, regarding them as ominous of war. These larve are apodes, white, 
sub-transparent, with black heads. The caterpillars of a moth Noetua 
(Xylophasia?) Ewingii Westw.,a native of Van Diemen’s Land, exhib- 
ited a singular migrating propensity as described by Thomas I. Ewing, 
Esq., who has given them the name of the “ migrating’ caterpillars.” 
Passing, about December 20th, from a barley field which had been 
ploughed up, and which seemed literally in motion with them, they pro- 
ceeded up the road, entered at the gateway into the lawn, then crossed 
the verandah in front of the house, and through two gardens until they 
reached a field laid down with English grasses, on which they committed 
sad havoc. Many of them did not stop there, as the whole road from 
the field to the town was black with them, They did not cease migrating 
for a fortnight, proceeding with a quick and almost running motion over 
every obstacle, whether walls or shrubs, &c., and making a sudden halt 


1 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, xi. bull. xii. f 
2 De Geer, vi. 338. 3 Naturforsch. xvii. 226. 


IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 329 


at noon wherever they chanced to be, and reposing in that spot till four 
the next morning, when they were again in motion.! It is probable that 
these caterpillars were in search of fresh pasture like others feeding on 
trees, of which instances are on record of a whole army having at once 
quitted a forest of which they had entirely consumed the leaves in quest 
of another. One of these hosts (as we may conclude) is stated by an 
American newspaper, the Charleston Courier, to have availed themselves 
in May, 1842, in passing from Richland to the St. Mathew’s shore, of 
a new railway there running over the Cangaree Swamp, as a convenient 
bridge, in such countless swarms that a solid column of them filled the 
railway for upwards of a mile, and actually arrested the course of a loco- 
motive drawing a full train of waggons laden with iron, though moving 
with a speed of ten to twelve miles an hour, and which was only able to 
proceed by throwing sand on the fore wheels. 

But of insect emigrants none are more celebrated than the locusts, 
which, when arrived at their perfect state, assemble, as before related, in 
such numbers, as in their flight to intercept the sunbeams, and to darken 
whole countries, passing from one region to another, and laying waste 
kingdom after kingdom ; but upon these I have already said much, and 
shall have occasion again to enlarge. The same tendency to shift their 
quarters has been observed in our little indigenous devourers, the Aphides. 
Mr. White tells us, that about three o’clock in the afternoon of the Ist of 
August, 1785, the people of the village of Selborne were surprised by a 
shower of Aphides or smother flies, which fell in those parts. Those that 
walked in the street at that juncture found themselves covered with these 
insects, which settled also upon the hedges and in the gardens, blackening 
all the vegetables where they alighted. His annuals were discolored by 
them, and the stalks of a bed of onions quite coated over for six days 
after. These armies, he observes, were then, no doubt, in a state of 
emigration, and shifting their quarters, and might have come from the 
great hop plantations of Kent or Sussex, the wind being all that day in 
the east. They were observed at the same time in great clouds about 
Farnham, and all along the vale from Farnham to Alton.2 <A similar 
emigration of these flies I once witnessed, to my great annoyance, when 
traveling later in the year, in the Isle of Ely ‘The air was so full of 
them, that they were incessantly flying into my eyes, nostrils, &c., and 
my clothes were covered by them. And in 1814, in the autumn, the 
Aphides were so abundant for a few days in the vicinity of Ipswich, as 
to be noticed with surprise by the most incurious observers ; as they were 
September 26th and 27th, 1836, at Hull, where, as the local newspapers 
stated, such swarms filled the air that it was impossible to walk with com- 
fort from their entering the eyes and mouth at every step; and on the 
same days they were equally numerous at York and Derby. 

As the locust-eating thrush (Turdus Gryllivorus) accompanies the 
locusts, so the lady-birds (Coccinelle) seem to pursue the Aphides ; for I 
know no other reason to assign for the vast number that are sometimes, 
especially in the autumn, to be met with on the sea-coast, or the banks 
of large rivers. Many years ago, those of the Humber were so thickly 
strewed with the common lady-bird (C. septempunctata), that it was diffi- 


1 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. lvi. 2 Nat. Hist. ii. 101. 
28* 


330 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


cult to avoid treading upon them. Some years afterwards I noticed a 
mixture of species, collected in vast numbers, on the $and-hills on the sea 
shore, at the north-west extremity of Norfolk. My friend, the Rey. 
Peter Lathbury, made long since a similar observation at Orford, on the 
Suffolk coast ; and about five or six years ago they covered the cliffs, as 
I have before remarked, of all the watering places on the Kentish and 
Sussex coasts, to the no small alarm of the superstitious, who thought 
them forerunners of some direful evil." These last probably emigrated 
with the Aphides from the hop grounds. Whether the latter and their 
devourers cross the sea has not been ascertained ; that the Coccinelle 
attempt it, is evident from their alighting upon ships at sea, as I have 
witnessed myself? This appears clearly to have been the case with 
another emigrating insect, the saw-fly (Athalia centifolie) of the turnip.’ 
It is the general opinion in Norfolk, Mr. Marshall informs us‘, that these 
insects come from over sea. A farmer declared he saw them arrive in 
clouds so as to darken the air; the fishermen asserted that they had 
repeatedly seen flights of them pass over their heads when they were 
at a distance from land, and on the beach and cliffs they were in such 
quantities, that they might have been taken up by shovels full. Three 
miles inland they were described as resembling swarms of bees. This 
was in August, 1782. Unentomological observers, such as farmers and 
fishermen, might easily mistake one kind of insect for another; but sup- 
posing them correct, the swarms in question might perhaps have passed 
from Lincolnshire to Norfolk. Meinecken tells us, that he once saw in 
a village in Anhalt, on a clear day, about four in the afternoon, such a 
cloud of dragon-flies (Libellulina) as almost concealed the sun, and not 
a little alarmed the villagers, under the idea that they were locusts® ; 
several instances are given by Résel of similar clouds of these insects 
having been seen in Silesia and other districts®; and Mr. Woolnough 
of Hollesley in Suffolk, a most attentive observer of nature, once wit- 
nessed such an army of the smaller dragon-flies (Agrion) flying inland 
from the sea as to cast a slight shadow over a field of four acres as they 
passed. A migration of dragon-flies was witnessed at Weimar in 
Germany in 1816, and one far more considerable, perhaps the greatest 
on record, May 30th and 31st, 1839, when cloud-like swarms of these 
insects (chiefly L. depressa) were seen at Weimar, Eisenach, Leipsig, 
Halle, and Gottingen, and the intervening country, extending over a very 
large district.7 Professor Walch states, that one night about eleven 
o’clock, sitting in his study, his attention was attracted by what seemed 
the pelting of hail against his window, which surprising him by its long 
continuance, he opened the window, and found the noise was occasioned 
by a flight of the froth frog-hopper (Aphrophora spumaria), which 
~1 Some such terrific idea would seem to have entered the sapient heads of the authorities 
of one of the principal towns of Berkshire, which in October, 1835, according to the Read- 
ing Mercury, having had “a most formidable invasion of this beautiful insect [lady-birds] 

. the parish engines, as well as private ones, were called into requisition, with tobacco- 
fumigated water, to attack and disperse them.” [!!!] 

2 Mr. Curtis informs us that the aphidivorous flies ( Sceva Ribesii, Pyrastri, &c.), like the 
lady-birds, sometimes appear in myriads on the sea coast, all flying in one direction, and 
not even avoiding objects that Jie in their course. (Brit. Ent. fol. 509.) 

3 Fn. Gern. Init. xlix. 18. 4 Philos. Trans, \xxiii. 217. 


5 Naturforsch. vi. 110. a Fi Bs 
7 Weissenborn in Mag. Nat. Hist. N. S. iii. 516. 


‘ 


. 
IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 331 


entered the room in such numbers as to cover the table. From this 
circumstance, and the continuance of the pelting, which, lasted at least 
half an hour, an idea may be formed of the vast host of this insect pass- 
ing over. It passed from east to west ; and as his window faced the south, 
they only glanced against it obliquely. He afterwards witnessed, in 
August, a similar emigration of myriads of a kind of ground beetle (Amara 
vulearis)2 But the most remarkable migrations “of beetles are those 
recorded by M. Lacordaire, who informs us that for two successive years, 
when he was at Buenos Ayres, that city was for about eight days in the 
spring of each year inundated by such millions of Harpalus cupripennis, 
which arrived daily towards nightfall, that it was necessary every morning 
to sweep them from the exterior of the houses to a height of several feet 
above the ground.? Another writer in the Naturforscher, H. Kapp, 
observed on a calm sunny day a prodigious flight of the noxious cabbage 
butterfly (Pontia Brassice), which passed from north-east to south-west, 
and lasted two hours. Kalm saw these last insects midway in the British 
Channel.° A similar migratory column of the universally spread Vanessa 
Cardui, of from ten to fifteen feet in breadth, and the passage of which 
occupied two hours, was observed in 1836 in the canton of Vaud, Swit- 
zerland.® Lindley, a writer in the Royal Military Chronicle, tells us, that 
in Brazil, in the beginning of March, 1803, for many days successively there 
was an immense flight of white and yellow butterflies, probably of the 
same tribe as the cabbage butterfly. ‘They were observed never to settle, 
but proceeded in a direction from north-west to south-east. No buildings 
seemed to stop them from steadily pursuing their course, which being to 
the ocean, at only a small distance, they must consequently perish. It 
is remarked that at this time no other kind of pusterdty is to be seen, 
though the country usually abounds in such a variety.7. In the instance 
of the butterflies, mostly of a species similar to, if not- identical with, the 
common English Colias Edusa, seen by Mr. Darwin'and Captain Fitz- 
roy when at sea, about ten miles from the bay of St. Blas, on the coast 
of South America, and which were in such countless myriads (occupying, 
according to Captain Fitzroy’s calculation, a space of not less than a 
mile in width, several miles in length, and two hundred yards in height) 
that the sailors exclaimed, “it is snowing butterflies:’’ their object in 
flying out so far to sea would seem to have been a voluntary migra- 
tion, as Mr. Darwin states that the day had been fine and calm.* Major 
Moor, while stationed at Bombay, as he was playing at chess one even- 
ing with a friend in Old Woman’s Island, near that place, witnessed an 
immense flight of bugs (Geocorise), which were going westward. They 
were sO numerous as to cover every thing in the apartment in which 
he was sitting. When staying at Aldeburgh, on the eastern coast, I have, 
at certain times, seen innumerable insects upon the beach close to the 
waves, and apparently washed up by them. Though wetted, they were 
quite alive. It is remarkable, that of the emigrating insects here enume- 


1 Naturforsch. vi. 111. * Thid. xi. 95. 
3 Lacordaire, Introd. & l’ Entom. ii. 494. 
4 Naturforsch. 94. 5 Travels, i. 13. 


® Silbermann, Revue Entom. ii. 142. 
7 R. Milit. Chron. for March 1815, p. 452. 
® Narrative of the surveying Voyages of his Majesty’s ships Adventure and Beagle, iii. 185. 


332 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


rated, the majority—for instance, the lady-birds, saw-flies, dragon-flies, 
ground-beetles, frog-hoppers, &c., are not usually social insects, but seem 
to congregate, like swallows, merely for the purpose of emigration. 
What incites them to this is one of those mysteries of nature, which at 
present we cannot penetrate. A scarcity of food urges the locusts to 
shift their quarters, and too confined a space to accommodate their num- 
bers occasions the bees to swarm; but neither of these motives can 
operate in causing unsocial insects to congregate. It is still more difficult 
to account for the impulse that urges these creatures, with their filmy 
wings and fragile form, to attempt to cross the ocean, and expose them- 
selves, one would think, to inevitable destruction. Yet, though we are 
unable to assign the cause of this singular instinct, some of the reasons 
which induced the Creator to endow them with it may be conjectured. 
This is clearly one of the modes by which their numbers are kept within 
due limits, as, doubtless, the great majority of these adventurers perish in 
the waters. Thus, also, a great supply of food is furnished to those fish 
in the sea itself, which at other seasons ascend the rivers in search of 
them; and this probably is one of the means, if not the only one, to 
which the numerous islands of this globe are indebted for their insect 
population. Whether the insects I observed upon the beach, wetted by 
the waves, had flown from our own shores, and falling into the water had 
been brought back by the tide; or whether they had succeeded in the 
attempt to pass from the continent to us, by flying as far as they could, 
and then falling had been brought by the waves, cannot certainly be ascer- 
tained ; but Kalm’s observation inclines me to the latter opinion. 

The next order of imperfect associations is that of those insects which 
feed together: these are of two descriptions ; those that associate in their 
first or last state only, and those that associate in all their states. The 
first of these associations is often very short-lived: a patch of eggs is 
glued to a leaf; when hatched, the little larve feed side by side very 
amicably, and a pleasant sight it is to see the regularity with which this 
work is often done, as if by word of command ; but when the leaf that 
served for their cradle is consumed, their society is dissolved, and each 
goes where he can to seek his own fortune, regardless of the fate or lot of 
his brethren. Of this kind are the larve of the saw-fly of the gooseberry, 
whose ravages I have recorded before, and that of the cabbage butterfly ; 
the latter, however, keep longer together, and seldom wholly separate. 
In their final state, I have noticed that the individuals of Thrips Phyga- 
pus, the fly that causes us in hot weather such intolerable titillation, are 
very fond of each other’s company when they feed. Towards the latter 
end of last July, walking through a wheat-field, I observed that all the 
blossoms of Convolvulus arvensis, though very numerous, were interiorly 
turned quite black by the infinite number of these insects, which were 
coursing about within them. 

But the most interesting insects of this order are those which associate 
in all their states. Two populous tribes, the great devastators of the 
vegetable world, the one in warm and the other in cold climates, to which 
I have already alluded under the head of emigration—you perceive I am 
speaking of Aphides and Locusts—are the best examples of this order: 
although, concerning the societies of the first, at present we can only say 


IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 333 


that they are merely the result of a common origin and station ; but those 
of the latter, the locusts, wear more the appearance of design, and of 
being produced by the social principle. 

So much as the world has suffered from these animals, it is extraordinary 
that so few observations have been made upon their history, economy, 
and mode of proceeding. One of the best accounts seems to be thatyof 
Professor Pallas, in his Travels into the Southern Provinces of the Rus- 
stan Empire. The species to which his principal attention was paid 
appears to have been the Locusta Italica, in its larva and pupa state. 
‘In serene warm weather,” says he, “the locusts are in full motion in 
the morning immediately after the evaporation of the dew ; and if no dew 
has fallen, they appear as soon as the sun imparts his genial warmth. At 
first some are seen running about like messengers among the reposing 
swarms, which are lying partly compressed upon the ground, at the side 
of small eminences, and partly attached to tall plants and shrubs. Shortly 
after, the whole body begins to move forward in one direction and with 
little deviation. ‘They resemble a swarm of ants, all taking the same 
course, at small distances, but without touching each other: they uni- 
formly travel towards a certain region as fast as a fly can run, and without 
leaping, unless pursued; in which case, indeed, they disperse, but soon 
collect again and follow their former route. In this manner they advance 
from morning to evening without halting, frequently at the rate of a hun- 
dred fathoms and upwards in the course of a day. Although they prefer 
marching along high roads, footpaths, or open tracts, yet when their 
progress is opposed by bushes, hedges, and ditches, they penetrate through 
them: their way can only be impeded by the waters of brooks or canals, 
as they are apparently terrified at every kind of moisture. Often, however, 
they endeavor to gain the opposite bank with the aid of overhanging 
boughs ; and if the stalks of plants or shrubs be laid across the water, 
they pass in close columns over these temporary bridges, on which they 
even seem to rest and enjoy the refreshing coolness. ‘Towards sunset the 
whole swarm gradually collect in parties, and creep up the plants, or 
encamp on slight eminences. On cold, cloudy, or rainy days they do not 
travel. As soon as they acquire wings they progressively disperse, but 
still fly about in large swarms.” 

“In the month of May, when the ovaries of these insects were ripe 
and turgid,” says Dr. Shaw, “each of these swarms began gradually to 
disappear, and retired into the Mettijiah, and other adjacent plains, where 
they deposited their eggs. , These were no sooner hatched in June, than 
each of the broods collected itself into a compact body, of a furlong or 
more in square, and marching afterwards directly forwards toward the sea, 
they let nothing escape them—they kept their ranks like men of war ; 
climbing over, as they advanced, every tree or wall that was in their way ; 
nay, they entered into our very houses and bed-chambers, like so many 
thieves. A day or two after one of these hordes was in motion, others 
were already hatched to march and glean after them. Having lived near 
a month in this manner, they arrived at their full growth, and threw off 
their nympha-state by casting their outward skin. To prepare themselves 
for this change, they clung by their hinder feet to some bush, twig, or 


=  ? Pallas, ii, 422—426. ? Travels, 187. 


334 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


corner of a stone; and immediately, by using an undulating motion, their 
heads would first break out, and then the rest of theirbodies. The whole 
transformation was performed in seven or eight minutes, after which they 
lay for a small time in a torpid and seemingly in a languishing condition ; 
but as soon as the sun and the air had hardened their wings, by drying up 
the moisture that remained upon them after casting their sloughs, they 
reassumed their former voracity, with an addition of strength and agility. 
Yet they continued not long in this state before they were entirely 
dispersed.” ‘The species Dr. Shaw here speaks of is probably not the 
Locusta migratoria. 

The old Arabian fable, that they are directed in their flights by a leader 
or king!, has been adopted, but I think without sufficient reason, by 
several travelers. ‘Thus Benjamin Bullivant, in his “ Observations on 
the Natural History of New England?,” says that “the locusts have a 
kind of regimental discipline, and as it were some commanders, which 
show greater and more splendid wings than the common ones, and arise 
first when pursued by the fowls or the feet of the traveler, as I have 
often seriously remarked.” And in like terms Jackson observes, that 
“they have a government amongst themselves similar to that of the bees 
and ants; and when the (Sultan Jerraad) king of the locusts rises, the 
whole body follow him, not one solitary straggler being left behind.”® 
But that locusts have leaders, like the bees or ants, distinguished from the 
rest by the size and splendor of their wings, is a circumstance that has 
not yet been established by any satisfactory evidence ; indeed, very strong 
reasons may be urged against it. The nations of bees and ants, it must 
be observed, are housed together in one nest or hive, the whole population 
of which is originally derived from one common mother, and the leaders 
of the swarms in each are the females. But the armies of locusts, though 
they herd together, travel together, and feed together, consist of an infinity 
of separate families, all derived from different mothers, who have laid 
their eggs in separate cells or houses in the earth; so that there is little or 
no analogy between the societies of locusts and those of bees and ants ; 
and this pretended sultan is something quite different from the queen bee 
or the female ants. It follows, therefore, that as the locusts have no 
common mother, like the bees, to lead their swarms, there is no one that 
nature, by a different organization and ampler dimensions, and a more 
august form, has destined to this high office. The only question remaining 
is, whether one be elected from the rest by common consent as their 
leader, or whether their instinct impels them to follow the first that takes 
flight or alights. This last is the learned Bochart’s opinion, and seems 
much the most reasonable. The absurdity of the other supposition, that 
an election is made, will appear from such queries as these, at which you 
may smile. Who are the electors? Are the myriads of millions all 
consulted, or is the elective franchise confined to a few? Who holds the 
courts and takes the votes? Who casts them up and declares the result ? 
When is the election made? The larve appear to be as much under 
government as the perfect insect. Is the monarch then chosen by his 
peers when they first leave the egg and emerge from their subterranean 


1 Bochart, Hierozoic. ii. 1. 4. c. 2. 460. 2 In Philos. Trans. for 1698. _ 
3 Jackson’s Marocco, 51. 4 Bochart, Hierozoic. ubi supra. 


IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 335 


caverns? or have larva, pupa, and imago each their separate king?) The 
account given us in Scripture is certainly much the most probable, that 
the locusts have no king, though they observe as much order and regu- 
larity in their movements as if they were under military discipline, and 
had a ruler over them.! Some species of ants, as we learn from the 
admirable history of them by M. P. Huber, though they go forth by 
common consent upon their military expeditions, yet the order of their 
columns keeps perpetually changing ; so that those who lead the van at 
the first setting out soon fall into the rear, and others take their place: 
their successors do the same; and such is the constant order of their 
march. It seems probable, as these columns are extended to a consider- 
able length, that the object of this successive change of leaders is to 
convey constant intelligence to those in the rear of what is going forward 
in the van. Whether any thing like this takes place for the regulation of 
their motions in the innumerable locust-armies, which are sometimes co- 
extensive with vast kingdoms; or whether their instinct simply directs 
them to follow the first that moves or flies, and to keep their measured 
distance, so that, as the prophet speaks, “‘one does not thrust another, 
and they walk every one in his path?,” must be left to future naturalists 
to ascertain. And [I think that you will join with me in the wish that 
travelers, who have a taste for Natural History, and some knowledge of 
insects, would devote a share of attention to the proceedings of these 
celebrated animals, so that we might have facts instead of fables. 

The last order of imperfect associations approaches nearer to perfect 
societies, and is that of those insects which the social principle urges to 
unite in some common work for the benefit of the community. 

Amongst the Coleoptera, Ateuchus pilularius, a beetle before mentioned, 
acts under the influence of this principle. ‘I have attentively admired 
their industry and mutual assisting of each other,” says Catesby, “in 
rolling those globular balls from the place where they made them to that 
of their interment, which is usually the distance of some yards, more or 
less. This they perform breech foremost, by raising their hind parts, 
forcing along the ball with their hind feet. Two or three of them are 
sometimes engaged in trundling one ball, which, from meeting with impedi- 
ments from the unevenness of the ground, is sometimes deserted by them: 
it is however attempted by others with success, unless it happens to roll 
into some deep hollow chink, where they are constrained to leave it; but 
they continue their work by rolling off the next ball that comes in their 
way. None of them seem to know their own balls, but an equal care for 
the whole appears to affect all the community.’ 

Many larve also of Lepidoptera associate with this view, some of 
which are social only during part of their existence, and others during the 
whole of it. The first of these continue together while their united labors 
are beneficial to them ; but when they reach a certain period of their life, 
they disperse and become solitary. Of this kind are the caterpillars of a 
little butterfly (Melitea Cinxia) which devour the narrow-leaved plantain. 
The families of these, usually amounting to about a hundred, unite to 
form a pyramidal silken tent, containing several apartments, which is 
pitched over some of the plants that constitute their food, and shelters 


1 Proverbs, xxx. 27. 2 Joel, ii. 8. 3 Catesby’s Carolina, ii. 111. 


336 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


them both from the sun and the rain. When they have consumed the 
provision which it covers, they construct a new one over other roots of 
this plant ; and sometimes four or five of these encampments may be seen 
within a foot or two of each other. Against winter they weave and erect 
a stronger habitation of a rounder form, not divided by any partitions, in 
which they lie heaped one upon another, each being rolled up. About 
April they separate, and continue solitary till they assume the pupa. 

Reaumur, to whom I am indebted for this account, has also given us 
an interesting history of another insect, the gold-tail moth (Porthesia 
chrysorrhea) before mentioned, whose caterpillars are of this description. 
They belong to that family of Bombycide which envelop their eggs in 
hair plucked from their own body. As soon as one of these young cater- 
pillars is disclosed from the egg it begins to feed ; another quickly joins 
it, placing itself by its side; thus they proceed in succession till a file is 
formed across the leaf:—a second is then begun ; and after this is com- 
pleted, a third—and so they proceed till the whole upper surface of the 
leaf is covered :—but as a single leaf will not contain the whole family, 
the remainder take their station upon the adjoining ones. No sooner 
have they satisfied the cravings of hunger, than they begin to think of 
erecting a common habitation, which at first is only a vaulted web, that 
covers the leaf they inhabit, but by their united labors as I have described 
in a former letter in due time grows into a magnificent tent of silk, con- 
taining various apartments sufficient to defend and shelter them all from 
the attacks of enemies and the inclemency of the seasons. As our cater- 
pillars, like eastern monarchs, are too delicate to adventure their feet upon 
the rough bark of the tree upon which they feed, they lay a silken carpet 
over every road and pathway leading to their palace, which extends 
as far as they have occasion to go for food. ‘To the habitation just 
described they retreat during heavy rains, and when the sun is too hot :— 
they likewise pass part of the night in them ;—and, indeed, at all times 
some may usually be found at home. Upon any sudden alarm they 
retreat to them for safety, and also when they cast their skins :—in the 
winter they are wholly confined to them, emerging again in the spring: 
but in May and June they entirely desert them ; and, losing all their love 
for society, live in solitude till they become pupe, which takes place in 
about a month. When they desert their nests, the spiders take possession 
of them ; which has given rise to a prevalent though most absurd opinion, 
that they are the parents of these caterpillars.! 

With other caterpillars the association continues during the whole of 
the larva state. De Geer mentions one of the saw-flies (Serrifera) of 
this description which form a common nidus by connecting leaves together 
with silken threads, each larva moreover spinning a tube of the same 
material for its own private apartment, in which it glides backwards and 
forwards upon its back.” I have observed similar nidi in this country : 
the insects that form them belong to the Fabrician genus Lyda. 

A small East Indian hair-streak butterfly (T'hecla Isocrates), of whose 
economy Mr. Westwood has given an interesting account, resides in the 
larva state in small societies of at least seven or eight individuals in the 
inside of the pomegranate, on the seeds and pulp of which it feeds. ‘The 


1 Reaumur, ii. 125, 2 De Geer, ii. 1029. 


IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 337 


fruit being thus rendered weak and unable to support its own weight would 
be liable to have its stalk broken and to fall to the ground with the first 
wind and there rot, in which state it would most probably be destructive 
to the inclosed larve. To obviate this evil, the caterpillars when full fed 
have the remarkable instinct to gnaw a hole about a quarter of an inch in 
diameter through the hard shell of the fruit while it still remains on the 
tree, and issuing through this hole to spin in common (as it would seem) 
a silken web attached both to the stalk and the base of the fruit, and 
sufficiently strong to support the pomegranate from falling in the event of 
the stalk being broken by the wind ; and having thus secured the stability 
of their chamber, they retire again into it, and there undergo their meta- 
morphosis, the butterflies while their wings are still unexpanded creeping 
out of the hole above mentioned, which thus serves a second important 
purpose in their economy, of allowing them a free passage in their perfect 
state through the hard shell of the pomegranate, which, if this door in it 
had not previously been provided by the caterpillar with its jaws, would 
have proved a fatal prison to the butterfly which has no such instruments.’ 

The most remarkable insects, however, that arrange under this class of 
imperfect associates, are those that observe a particular order of march. 
Though they move without beat of drum, they maintain as much regularity 
in their step asa file of soldiers. It is a most agreeable sight, says one 
of Nature’s most favored admirers, Bonnet, to see several hundreds of the 
larvee of Clisiocampa neustria marching after each other, some in straight 
lines, others in curves of various inflection, resembling, from their fiery 
color, a moving cord of gold stretched upon a silken ribband of the purest 
white; this ribband is the carpeted causeway that leads to their leafy 
pasture from their nest. Equally amusing is the progress of another moth, 
the Pityocampa, before noticed; they march together from their common 
citadel, consisting of pine leaves united and inwoven with the silk which 
they spin, in a single line: in following each other they describe a multi- 
tude of graceful curves of varying figure, thus forming a series of living 
wreaths, which change their shape every moment:—all move with a 
uniform pace, no one pressing too forward or loitering behind; when the 
first stops, all stop, each defiling in exact military order.” 

A still more singular and pleasing spectacle, when their regiments march 
out to forage, is exhibited by the caterpillars of the Processtonary moth 
(Cnethocampa processionea). ‘This moth, which is a native of -France, 
and has not yet been found in this country, inhabits the oak. Each 
family consists of from 600 to 800 individuals. When young, they have 
no fixed habitation, but encamp sometimes in one place and sometimes in 
another, under the shelter of their web: but when they have attained two 
thirds of their growth, they weave for themselves a common tent, before 
described. About sunset the regiment leaves its quarters ; or, to make 
the metaphor harmonize with the trivial name of the animal, the monks 
their ceenobium. At their head is a chief, by whose movements their pro- 
cession is regulated. When he stops, all stop, and proceed when he 
proceeds ; three or four of his immediate followers succeed in the same 


1 Westwood in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 1. tab. 1, The Mexican butterfly, ( Eucheira 
socialis Westw ) previously noticed, is also (as its name implies) social in its larva state. 
® Bonnet, ii. 57. 
29 


338 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


line, the head of the second touching the tail of the first: then comes an 
equal series of pairs, next of threes, and so on as far as fifteen or twenty. 
The whole procession moves regularly on with an even pace, each file 
treading upon the steps of those that precede it. If the leader, arriving 
at a particular point, pursues a different direction, all march to that point 
before they turn. Probably in this they are guided by some scent impart- 
ed to the tracks by those that pass over them. Sometimes the order of 
procession is different ; the leader, who moves singly, is followed by two, 
these are succeeded by three, then come four, and soon. When the 
leader,—who in nothing differs from the rest, and is probably the cater- 
pillar nearest the entrance to the nest, followed, as I have described,— 
has proceeded to the distance of about two feet, more or less, he makes a 
halt ; during which those which remain come forth, take their places, the 
company forms into files, the march is resumed, and all follow as regularly 
as if they kept time to music. These larve may be occasionally found at 
mid-day out of their nests, packed close one to another without making 
any movement ; so that, although they occupy a space sufficiently ample, 
it is not easy to discover them. At other times, instead of being simply 
laid side by side, they are formed into singular masses, in which they are 
heaped one upon another, and, as it were, interwoven together. Thus, 
also, they are disposed in their nests. Sometimes their families divide into 
two bands, which never afterwards unite.! 

The processionary caterpillars of the fir (those of Cnethocampa pityo- 
campa), like the preceding, live in a common silken net placed at the 
extremities of its branches, on which they feed.; and when they leave one 
tree to proceed to another they also move in procession, but with this 
striking difference, that they all range themselves in a single file, the head 
of each so exactly touching the tail of that before it as to form apparently 
one vast caterpillar of from fifteen to twenty feet long, and thus traversing 
by acontinuous and occasionally, slightly jerking motion, without ever 
breaking their line, the path they have chosen. What is singular is, that 
if the first caterpillar of the file be touched with the hand or a stick, it 
shrinks and is visibly agitated, as if it feared to be stung by an Ichneumon, 
and the last of the file, even if composed of six hundred, makes at the 
same instant, as well as every intermediate individual, the same movements, 
as if struck by an electric shock.2—The individuals of another procession- 
ary caterpillar, the perfect insect of which Mr. Ewing had not been able 
to rear, he informs us march in circles, or rather ovals, and, when young, 
follow one another round and round for hours together !§ 

I have nothing further of importance to communicate to you on imper- 
fect societies: in my next I shall begin the most interesting subject that 
Entomology offers ; a subject, to say the least, including as great a portion 
both of instruction and amusement as any branch of Natural History 
affords ;—I mean those perfect associations which have for their great 
object the multiplication of the species, and the education, if such a term 
may be here employed, of the young. This is too fertile a theme to be 
confined to a single letter, but must occupy several. 

I am, &c. 


1 Reaumur, ii. 180. ? De Villiers, Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, i. 201. 
3 Westwood in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. lv. 


’ 


339 


LETTER XVII. 
SOCIETIES OF INSECTS—continued. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES. (WHITE ANTS AND ANTS.) 


Tue associations of insects of which my last letter gave you a detail were — 
of a very imperfect kind, both as to their object and duration: but those 
which 1 am now to lay before you exhibit the semblance of a nearer 
approach, both in their principle and its results, to the societies of man 
himself. ‘There are two kindred sentiments that in these last act with 
most powerful energy—desire and affection. From the first proceed many 
wants that cannot be satisfied without the intercourse, aid, and co-opera- 
tion of others ; and by the last we are impelled to seek the good of certain 
objects, and to delight in their society. Thus self-love combines with 
philanthropy to produce the social principle, both desire and love alter- 
nately urging us to an intercourse with each other; and from these in 
union originate the multiplication and preservation of the species. ‘These 
two passions are the master-movers in this business; but there is a third 
subsidiary to them, which, though it trenches upon the social principle, 
considered abstractedly, is often a powerful bond of union in separate 
societies—you will readily perceive that I am speaking of fear ;—under 
the influence of this passion these are drawn closer together, and unite 
more intimately for defence against some common enemy, and to raise 
works of munition that may resist his attack. 

The main instrument of association is language, and no association can 
be perfect where there is not a common tongue. ‘The origin of nation- 
ality was difference of speech: at Babel, when tongues were divided, 
nations separated. Language may be understood in a larger sense than to 
signify inflections of the voice,—it may well include all the means of 
making yourself understood by another, whether by gestures, sounds, signs, 
or words: the first two of these kinds may be called natural language, 
and the last two arbitrary or artificial. 

I have said that perfect societies of insects exhibit the semblance of a 
nearer approach, both in their principle and its results, to the societies of 
man himself, because, unless we could perfectly understand what instinct 
is, and how it acts, we cannot, without exposing ourselves to the charge 
of temerity, assert that these are precisely the same. 

But when we consider the object of these societies, the preservation 
and multiplication of the species, and the means by which that object is 
attained, the united labors and co-operation of perhaps millions of indi- 
viduals, it seems as if they were impelled by passions very similar to those 
mainsprings of human associations which I have just enumerated. Desire 
appears to stimulate them—love to allure them—fear to alarm them. 


340 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


They want a habitation to reside in, and food for their subsistence. Does 
not this look as if desire were the operating cause, Which induces them to 
unite their labors to construct the one and provide the other? Their nests 
contain a numerous family of helpless brood. Does not love here seem 
to urge them to that exemplary and fond attention, and those unremitted 
and indefatigable exertions manifested by the whole community for the 
benefit of these dear objects? Is it not also evidenced by their general 
and singular attachment to their females, by their mutual caresses, by 
their feeding each other, by their apparent sympathy with suffering indi- 
viduals and endeavors to relieve them, by their readiness to help those 
that are in difficulty, and finally by their sports and assemblies for relaxa- 
tion? That fear produces its influence upon them seems no less evident, 
when we see them, agitated by the approach of enemies, endeavor to 
remove what is most dear to them beyond their reach, unite their efforts 
to repel their attacks, and to construct works of defence. They appear 
to have besides a common language; for they possess the faculty, by 
significative gestures and sounds, of communicating their wants and ideas 
to each other.! 

There are, however, the following great differences between human 
societies and those of insects. Man is susceptible of individual attach- 
ment, which forms the basis of his happiness, and the source of his purest 
and dearest enjoyments: whereas the love of insects seems to be a kind 
of instinctive patriotism that is extended to the whole community, never 
distinguishing individuals, unless, as in the instance of the female bee, 
connected with that great object. . 

Man also, endowed with reason, forms a judgment from circumstances, 
and by a variety of means can attain the same end. Besides the language 
of nature, gestures, and exclamations, which the passions produce, he is 
gifted with the divine faculty of speech, and can express his thoughts by 
articulate sounds or artificial language.—Not so our social insects. Every 
species has its peculiar mode of proceeding, to which it adheres as to the 
law of its nature, never deviating but under the control of imperious 
circumstances ; for in particular instances, as you will see when I come to 
treat of their instincts, they know how to vary, though not very materi- 
ally, from the usual mode.” But they never depart, like man,.from the 
general system; and, in common with the rest of the animal kingdom, 
they have no articulate language. ' 

Human associations, under the direction of reason and revelation, are 
also formed with higher views,—I mean as to government, morals, and 
religion :—with respect to the last of these, the social insects of course 
can have nothing to do, except that by their wonderful proceedings they 
give man an occasion of glorifying his great Creator ; but in their instincts, 
extraordinary as it may seem, they exhibit a semblance of the two former, 
as will abundantly appear in the course of our correspondence. 


1 It is not here meant to be asserted that insects are actuated by these passions in the 
same way that man is, bat only that in their various instincts they exhibit the semblance of 
them, and, as it were, symbolize them. s 

* Plusieurs d’entre eux (Jnsectes) savent user de ressources ingénieuses dans les circon- 
stances difficiles: ils sortent alors de leur routine accoutumée, et semblent agir d’aprés la - 
position dans laquelle ils se trouvent; c’est 1&4 sans doute l’un des phénoménes les plus 
curieux de Vhistoire naturelle. Huber, Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles, ii. 198.—Com- 
pare also ibid. 250. note N. B. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 341 


I shall not detain you longer by prefatory remarks from the amusing 
scene to which I am eager to introduce you; but the following observa- 
tions of M. P. Huber on this subject are so just and striking, that I cannot 
refrain from copying them. 

“'The history of insects that live in solitude consists of their genera- 
tion, their peculiar habits, the metamorphoses they undergo ; their manner 
of life under each successive form; the stratagems for the attack of their 
enemies, and the skill with which they construct their habitation: but 
that of insects which form numerous societies is not confined to some 
remarkable proceedings, to some peculiar talent; it offers new relations, 
which arise from common interest, from the equality or superiority of rank, 
from the part which each member supports in the society ;—and all these 
relations suppose a connection between the different individuals of which 
it consists that can scarcely exist but by the intervention of language: for 
such may be called every mode of expressing their wishes, their wants, 
and even their ideas, if that name may be given to the impulses of 
instinct. It would be difficult to explain in any other way that concur- 
rence of all wills to one end, and that species of harmony which the 
whole of their institution exhibits.” 

The great end of the societies of insects being the rapid multiplication 
of the species, Providence has employed extraordinary means to secure 
the fulfilment of this object, by creating a particular order of individuals 
in each society, which, freed from sexual pursuits, may give themselves 
wholly to labor, and thus absolve the females from every employment but 
that of furnishing the society from time to time with a sufficient supply of 
eggs to keep up the popmatian to its proper standard. In the case of the 
Termites, the office of working for the society, as these insects belong to 
an order whose metamorphosis is semt-complete, devolves upon the larve ; 
the neuters, unless these should prove to be the larve of males, being the 
soldiers of the community. 

From this circumstance perfect societies may be divided into two classes ; 
the first including those whose workers are larveé, and the second those 
whose workers are neuters.' The white ants belong to the former of 
these classes, and the social Hymenopterg to the latter. 

Before I begin with the-history of the societies of white ants, I must 
notice a remark that has been made applying to societies in general— 
that numbers are essential to the full development of the instinct of 
social animals. ‘This has been observed by Bonnet with respect to the 
beaver?; by Reaumur of the hive-bee; and by M. P. Huber of the 
humble-bee.? Amongst Hymenopterous social insects, however, the 
observation seems not universally applicable, but only under particular 
circumstances ; for in incipient societies of ants, humble-bees, and wasps, 
one female lays the foundation of them at first by herself, and the first 
brood of neuters that is hatched is very small. 


I have on a former occasion given you some account of the devastation 


1 Temploy occasionally the term neuters, though it is not perfectly proper, for the sake of 
convenience ;—strictly speaking, they may rather be regarded as imperfect or sterile females. 
Yet certainly, as the imperfection of their or. ganization unfits them for sexual purposes, the 
term neuter is not absolutely improper. 2 Gun. ix. 163. 

8 M. P. Huber in Lina, Trans. vi. 256. Reaum. v. 


29* 


342 ’ PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


produced by the white ants, or Termites, the species of which constitute 
‘the first class of perfect societies ; [ shall now relafe to you some further 
particulars of their history, which will, I hope, give you a better opinion 
of them. 

The majority of these animals are natives of tropical countries, though 
two species are indigenous to Europe; one of which, thought to have 
been imported, is come so near to us as Bourdeaux. ‘The fullest account 
hitherto given of their history is that of Mr. Smeathman, in the Philo- 
sophical Transactions for 1781; which, since it has in many particulars 
been confirmed by the observations of succeeding naturalists, though in 
some things he was evidently mistaken, I shall abridge for you, correcting 
him where he appears to be in error, and adding from Latreille, and the 
MS. of a French naturalist resident on the spot, kindly furnished by 
Professor Hooker, what they have observed with respect to those of 
Bourdeaux and Ceylon. ‘The white ants, though they belong to the 
Neuroptera order, borrow their instinct from the hymenopterous social 
tribes, and in conjunction with the ants (Formica) connect the two orders. 
Their societies consist of five descriptions of individuals—workers or 
larve—nymphs or pupe—neuters or soldiers—males and females. 

1. The workers or larve, answering to the hymenopterous neuters, are 
the most numerous and at the same time the most active part of the 
community ; upon whom devolves the office of erecting and repairing the 
buildings, collecting provisions, attending upon the female, conveying the 
eggs when laid to what Smeathman calls the nurseries, and feeding the 
young larve till they are old enough to take care of themselves. They 
are distinguished from the soldiers by their diminutive size, by their round 
heads and shorter mandibles. 

2. The nymphs or pupe. These were not noticed by Smeathman, who 
mistook the neuters for them :—they differ in nothing from the larve, and 
probably are equally active, except that they have rudiments of wings, or 
rather the wings folded up in cases (pterothece). They were first observed 
by Latreille; nor did they escape the author of the MS. above alluded 
to, who mistook them for a different kind of Jarve. 

3. The neuters, erroneously called by Smeathman pupe. These are much 
less numerous than the workers, bearing the proportion of one to one 
hundred, and exceeding them greatly in bulk. They are also distinguishable 
by their long and large head, armed with very long subulate mandibles. 
Their office is that of sentinels; and when the nest is attacked, to them 
is committed the task of defending it. These neuters are quite unlike 
those in the Hymenoptera perfect societies, which seem to be a kind of 
abortive females, and there is nothing analogous to them in any other 
department of Entomology. ; 

4. and 5. Males and females, or the insects arrived at their state of 
perfection, and capable of continuing the species. There is only one of 
each in every separate society ; they are exempted from all participation 
in the labors and employments occupying the rest of the community, that 
they may be wholly devoted to the furnishing of constant accessions to the 
population of the colony. Though at their first disclosure from the pupa 
they have four wings, like the female ants they soon cast them; but they 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 343 


may then be distinguished from the blind larve, pupe, and neuters, by 
their large and prominent eyes." 

The first establishment of a colony of Termites takes place in the 
following manner. In the evening, soon after the first tornado, which at 
the latter end of the dry season proclaims the approach of the ensuing 
rains, these animals, having attained to their perfect state, in which they 
are furnished and adorned with two pair of wings, emerge from their clay- 
built citadels by myriads and myriads to seek their fortune. Borne on 
these ample wings, and carried by the wind, they fill the air, entering the 
houses, extinguishing the lights, and even sometimes being driven on board 
the ships that are not far from the shore. The next morning they are 
discovered covering the surface of the earth and waters: deprived of the 
wings which before enabled them to avoid their numerous enemies, and 
which are only calculated to carry them a few hours, and looking like large 
maggots ; from the most active, industrious, and rapacious, they are now 
become the most helpless and cowardly beings in nature, and the prey of 
innumerable enemies, to the smallest of which they make not the least 
resistance. Insects, especially ants, which are always on the hunt for them, 
leaving no place unexplored; birds, reptiles, beasts, and even man him- 
self, look upon this event as their harvest, and, as you have been told 
before, make them their food; so that scarcely a single pair in many 
millions get into a place of safety, fulfil the first law of nature, and lay the 
foundation of a new community. At this time they are seen running 
upon the ground, the male after the female, and sometimes two chasing 
one, and contending with great eagerness, regardless of the innumerable 
dangers that surround them, who shall win the prize. 

The workers, who are continually prowling about in their covered ways, 
“occasionally meet with one of these pairs, and, being impelled by their 
instinct, pay them homage, and they are elected as it were to be king and 
queen, or rather father and mother, of a new colony®: all that are not so 
fortunate inevitably perish ; and, considering the infinite host of their 
enemies, probably in the course of the following day. The workers as 
soon as this election takes place, begin to inclose their new rulers in a 
small chamber of clay, before described, suited to their size, the entrances 
to which are only large enough to admit themselves and the neuters, but 
much too small for the royal pair to pass through ;—so that their state 
of royalty is a state of confinement, and so continues during the remainder 
of their existence. The impregnation of the female is supposed to take 
place after this confinement, and she soon begins to furnish the infant 
colony with new inhabitants. The care of feeding her and her male 
companion devolves upon the industrious larve, who supply them both 
with every thing that they want. As she increases in dimensions, they 


1 The neuters in all respects bear a stronger analogy to the larve than to the perfect 
insects; and, after all, may possibly turn out to be larve, perhaps of the males. Huber 
seems to doubt their being neuters. Nouv. Obs. ii. 444. note *. Great differences of opinion 
continue to exist amongst entomologists as to the real nature of the individuals above de- 
seribed of this very anomalous tribe, for the details of which and of the arguments employed, 
see Westwood, Mod. Classif. of Ins. ii. 15. 

2 In this these animals vary from the usual instinct of the social Hymenoptera, the ants, 
the wasps, and the humble bees—with whom the females lay the first foundations of the 
colonies, unassisted by any neuters ;—but in the swarms of the hive bee an election may 
perhaps in some instances be said to take place. 


344 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


keep enlarging the cell in which she is detained. When the business of 
oviposition commences, they take the eggs from the female, and deposit 
them in the nurseries. Her abdomen now begins gradually to extend, tll 
in process of time it is enlarged to 1500 or 2000 times the size of the 
rest of her body, and her bulk equals that of 20,000 or 30,000 workers. 
This part, often more than three inches in length, is now a vast matrix of 
eggs, which make long circumvolutions through numberless slender ser- 
pentine vessels: it is also remarkable for its peristaltic motion (in this 
resembling the female ant'), which, like the undulations of water, pro- 
duces a perpetual and successive rise and fall over the whole surface of 
the abdomen, and occasions a constant extrusion of the eggs, amounting 
sometimes in old females to sixty in a minute, or eighty thousand and 
upwards in twenty-four hours. As these females live two years in 
their perfect state, how astonishing must be the number produced in that 
time ! 

This incessant extrusion of eggs must call for the attention of a large 
number of the workers in the royal chamber (and indeed it is always full 
of them), to take them as they come forth and carry them to the nurse- 
ries; in which, when hatched, they are provided with food, and receive 
every necessary attention till they are able to shift for themselves.—One 
remarkable circumstance attends these nurseries—they are always covered 
with a kind of mould, amongst which arise numerous globules about the 
size of a small pin’s head. ‘This is probably a species of Mucor ; and by 
Mr. Kénig, who found them also in nests of an East India species of 
‘Termes, is conjectured to be the food of the larve. 

The royal cell has, besides some soldiers in it, a kind of body guard to 
the royal pair that inhabit it; and the surrounding apartments contain 
always many, both laborers and soldiers in waiting, that they may succes- 
sively attend upon and defend the common father and mother, on whose 
safety depend the happiness and even the existence of the whole com- 
munity, and whom these faithful subjects never abandon even in their last 
distress. 

The manper in which the Termites feed the young brood before they 
commence their active life and are admitted to share in the labors of the 
nest, has not, as far as I know, been recorded by any writer: I shall, 
therefore, leave them in their nurseries, and introduce you to the bustling 
scene which these creatures exhibit in their first state after they are 
become useful. To do this, in vain should I carry you to one of their 
nests—you would scarcely see a single one stirring—though, perhaps, 
under your feet there would be millions going and returning by a thousand 
different ways. Unless I possessed the power of Asmodeus in Le Diable 
Boiteux, of showing you their houses and covered ways with their roofs 
removed, you would return home as wise as you came; for these little 
busy creatures are taught by Providence always to work under cover. 
If they have to travel over a rock or up a tree, they vault with a coping 
of earth the route they mean to pursue, and they form subterranean 
paths and tunnels, some of a diameter wider than the bore of a large 


1 Gould’s Account of English Ants, 22. F 
2 John Hunter dissected two young queens. Inthe abdomen he found two ovaries, con- 
sisting of many hundred oviduets, each containing innumerable eggs. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 345. 


cannon, on all sides from their habitation to their various objects of attack ; 
or which sloping down (for they cannot well mount a surface quite per- 
pendicular) penetrate to the depth of three or four feet under their nests 
into the earth, till they arrive at a soil proper to be used in the erection 
of their buildings. Were they, indeed, to expose themselves, the race 
would soon be annihilated by their innumerable enemies. This circum- 
stance has deceived the author of the MS. account of those in Ceylon, 
who, speaking of the nests of these insects in that island, which he 
describes as twelve feet high, observes, that ‘“ they may be considered asa 
large city, which contains a great. number of houses, and these houses an 
infinite number of cells or apartments :—these cells appear to me to com- 
municate with each other, but not the houses. I have convinced myself, 
by bringing together the broken walls of one of the cavities of the nest 
or cone, that it does not communicate with any other, nor with the exterior 
of the cone—a very curious circumstance, which I will not undertake to 
explain. Other cavities communicate by a very narrow tunnel.” By 
not looking for subterranean communications, he was probably led into 
this error. 

You have before heard of their diligence in building. Does any acci- 
dent happen to their various structures, or are they dislodged from any of 
their covered ways, they are still more active and expeditious in repairing. 
Getting out of sight as soon as possible—and they run as fast or faster than 
any insect of their size—in a single night they will restore a gallery of three 
or four yards in length. If, attacking the nest, you divide it in halves, 
leaving the royal chamber, and thus lay open thousands of apartments, all 
will be shut up with their sheets of clay by the next morning ;—nay, even 
if the whole be demolished, provided the king and the queen be left, every 
interstice between the ruins, at which either cold or wet can possibly enter, 
will be covered, and in a year the building will be raised nearly to its pris- 
tine size and grandeur. 

Besides building and repairing, a great deal of their time is occupied in 
making necessary alterations in their mansion and its approaches. The 
royal presence-chamber, as the female increases in size, must be gradually 
enlarged, the nurseries must be removed toa greater distance, the cham- 
bers and exterior of the nest receive daily accessions to provide for a daily 
increasing population ; and the direction of their covered ways must often 
be varied, when the old stock of provision is exhausted and new dis- 
covered. 

The collection of provisions for the use of the colony is another employ- 
ment, which necessarily calls for incessant attention: these to the naked 
eye appear like raspings of wood ;—and they are, as you have seen, great 
destroyers of timber, whether wrought or unwrought :—but when examined 
by the microscope, they are found to consist chiefly of gums and the in- 
spissated juices of plants, which, formed into little masses, are stored up in 
magazines of clay. 

When any one is bold enough to attack their nest and make a breach in 
its walls, the laborers, who are incapable of fighting, retire within, and 
give place to another description of its inhabitants, whose office it is to 
defend the fortress when assailed by enemies :—these, as observed before, 
are the neuters or soldiers. If the breach be made in a slight part of the 


346 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


building, one of these comes out to reconnoitre ; he then retires and gives 
the alarm. Two or three others next appear, scrantbling as fast as they 
can one after the other ;—to these succeed aslarge body, who rush forth 
with as much speed as the breach will permit, their number continually 
increasing during the attack. It is not easy to describe the rage and fury 
by which these diminutive heroes seem actuated. In their haste they fre- 
quently miss their hold, and tumble down the sides of their hill ; they soon, 
however, recover themselves, and, being blind, bite every thing they run 
against. If the attack proceeds, the bustle and agitation increase to a ten- 
fold degree, and their fury is raised to its highest pitch. Wo to him whose 
hands or legs they can come at! for they will make their fanged jaws meet 
at the very first stroke, drawing as much blood as will counterpoise their 
whole body, and never quitting their hold, even though they are pulled 
limb from limb. The naked legs of the Negroes expose them frequently 
to this injury ; and the stockings of the European are not sufficient to 
defend him. 

On the other hand, if, after the first attack, you get a little out of the 
way, giving them no further interruption, supposing the assailant of their 
citadel is gone beyond their reach, in less than half an hour they will retire 
into the nest ; and before they have all entered, you will see the laborers 
in motion, hastening in various directions towards the breach, every one 
carrying in his mouth a mass of mortar half as big as his body?, ready 
tempered :—this mortar is made of the finer parts of the gravel, which 
they probably select in the subterranean pits or passages before described, 
which, worked up to a proper consistence, hardens to the solid substance 
resembling stone, of which their nests are constructed. As fast as they 
come up, each sticks its burden upon the breach ; and this is done with so 
much regularity and despatch, that although thousands, nay millions, are 
employed, they never appear to embarrass or interrupt one another. By 
the united labors of such an infinite host of creatures the wall soon rises, 
and the breach is repaired. 

While the laborers are thus employed, almost all the soldiers have 
retired quite out of sight, except here and there one, who saunters about 
amongst them, but never assists in the work. One in particular places 
himself close to the wall which they are building; and turning himself 
leisurely on all sides, as if to survey the proceedings, appears to act the 
part of an overseer of the works. Every now and then, at the interval 
of a minute or two, by lifting up his head and striking with his forceps 
upon the wall of the nest, he makes a particular noise, which is answered 
by a loud hiss from all the laborers, and appears to be a signal for despatch ; 
for, every time it is heard, they may be seen to redouble their pace, and 
apply to their work with increased diligence. Renew the attack, and this 
amusing scene will be repeated :—in rush the laborers, all disappearing in 
a few seconds, and out march the military as numerous and vindictive as 
before. When all is once more quiet, the busy laborers re-appear, and 
resume their work, and the soldiers vanish. Repeat the experiment a 
hundred cheng and the same will al be the result ;—you will never 


1 The « anonymous author before alluded to, who hase a the Gevient white ants, says, 
that such was the size of the masses, which were tempered with a strong gluten, that they 
adhered though laid on the upper part of the breach. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 347 


find, be the peril or emergency ever so great, that one order attempts to 
fight, or the other to work. 

You have seen how solicitous the Termites are to move and work under 
cover and concealed from observation ; this, however, is not always the 
case ;—there is a species larger than T’. bellicossus, whose proceedings I 
have been principally describing, which Mr. Smeathman calls the marching 
Termes (Termes viarum). He was once passing through a thick forest, 
when on a sudden a loud hiss, like that of serpents, struck him with alarm, 
The next step produced a repetition of the sound, which he then recog- 
nized to be that of white ants; yet he was surprised at seeing none of 
their hills or covered ways. Following the noise, to his great astonishment 
and delight he saw an army of these creatures emerging from a hole in the 
ground; their number was prodigious, and they marched with the utmost 
celerity. When they had proceeded about a yard they divided into two 
columns, chiefly composed of laborers, about fifteen abreast, following each 
other in close order, and going straight forward. Here and there was seen 
a soldier, carrying his vast head with apparent difficulty, and looking like 
an ox ina flock of sheep, who marched on in the same manner. At the 
distance of a foot or two from the columns many other soldiers were to be 
seen, standing still or pacing about asif upon the look-out, lest some enemy 
should suddenly sure their unwarlike comrades ;—other soldiers, which 
was the most extraordinary and amusing part of the scene, having mounted 
some plants and placed themselves on the points of their leaves, elevated 
from ten to fifteen inches from the ground, hung over the army marching 
below, and by striking their forceps upon the leaf, produced at intervals 
the noise before mentioned. 'To this signal the whole army returned a 
hiss, and obeyed it by increasing their pace. The soldiers at these signal 
stations sat quite still during the intervals of silence, except now and then 
making a slight turn of the head, and seemed as solicitous to keep their 
posts as regular sentinels. ‘The two columns of this army united after 
continuing separate for twelve or fifteen paces, having in no part been 
above three yards asunder, and then descended into the! earth by two or 
three holes. Mr. Smeathman continued watching them for above an hour, 
during which time their numbers appeared neither to increase nor dimin- 
ish :—the soldiers, however, who quitted the line of march and acted as 
sentinels, became much more numerous before he quitted the spot. The 
larve and neuters of this species are furnished with eyes. 

The societies of Termes lucifugus, discovered by Latreille at Bour- 
deaux, are very numerous; but instead of erecting artificial nests, they 
make their lodgment in the trunks of pines and oaks, where the branches 
diverge from the tree. They eat the wood the nearest the bark, or the 
alburnum, without attacking the interior, and bore a vast number of holes 
and irregular galleries. That part of the wood appears moist, and is 
covered with little gelatinous particles, not unlike gum-arabic. These 
insects seem to be furnished with an acid of a very penetrating odor, 
which perhaps is useful to them for softening the wood.’ The soldiers in 
these societies are as about one to twenty-five of the laborers.? The 
anonymous author of the observations on the Termites of Ceylon seems 
to have discovered a sentry-box in his nests. ‘I found,” says he, “ina 


? Latr, Hist. Nat. xiii. 64. 2 N. Dict. D’ Hist. Nat. xxii. 57, 58. 


348 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


very small cell in the middle of the solid mass, (a cell about half an inch 
in height, and very narrow,) a larva with an endfmous head. ‘Two of 
these individuals were in the same cell:—one of the two seemed placed 
as sentinel at the entrance of the cell. I amused myself by forcing the 
door two or three times:—the sentinel immediately appeared, and only 
retreated when the door was on the point to be stopped up, which was 
done in three minutes by the laborers.” 


I hope this account has reconciled you in some degree to the destructive 
Termites :—I shall next introduce you to social insects, concerning most 
of which you have probably conceived a more favorable opinion—I mean 
those which constitute the second class of perfect societies, whose workers 
are not larve, but neuters. These all belong to the Hymenoptera order 
of Linné :—there are four kinds of insects in this order, (which you will 
find as fertile in the instructors of mankind, as you have seen it to be in 
our benefactors,) that, varying considerably from each other in their pro- 
ceedings as social animals, separately merit your attention ; namely, ants, 
wasps and hornets, humble-bees, and the hive-bee. I begin with the 
first. 

Full of interesting traits as are the history and economy of the white- 
ants, and however earnestly they may induce you to wish you could be a 
spectator of them, yet they scarcely exceed those of an industrious tribe 
of insects, which are constantly passing under our eye. The ant has 
attracted universal notice, and been celebrated from the earliest ages, both 
by sacred and profane writers, as a pattern of prudence, foresight, wisdom, 
and diligence. Upon Solomon’s testimony in their favor I have enlarged 
before ; and for those of other ancient writers, I must refer you to the 
learned Bochart, who has collected them in his Hierozoicon. 

In reading what the ancients say on this subject, we must be careful, 
however, to separate truth from error, or we shall attribute much more to 
ants than of right belongs to them. Who does not smile when he reads 
of ants that emulate the wolf in size, the dog in shape, the lion in its feet, 
and the leopard in its skin—ants, whose employment is to mine for gold, 
and from whose vengeance the furtive Indian is constrained to fly on the 
swift camel’s back?! But when we find the writers of all nations and 
ages unite in affirming, that, having deprived it of the power of vegetating, 
ants store up grain in their nests, we feel disposed to give larger credit to 
an assertion, which, at first sight, seems to savor more of fact than of fable, 
and does not attribute more sagacity and foresight to these insects than in 
other instances they are found to possess. Writers in general, therefore, 
who have considered this subject, and some even of very late date, have 
taken it for granted that the ancients were correct in this notion. But 
when observers of nature began to examine the manners and economy of 
these creatures more narrowly, it was found, at least with respect to the 
European species of ants, that no such hordes of grain were made by 
them, and, in fact, that they had no magazines in their nests in which pro- 
visions of any kind were stored up. It was therefore surmised that the 
ancients, observing them carry about their pupe, which, in shape, size, 
and color, not a little resemble a grain of corn, and the ends of which 


1 Bochart, Hierozoic. ii. |. iv. c. 22. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 349 


they sometimes pull ‘open to let out the enclosed insect, mistook the one 
for the other, and this action for depriving the grain of the corculum. 
Mr. Gould, our countryman, was one of the first historians of the ant who 
discovered that they did not store up corn; and since his time nauralists 
have generally subscribed to that opinion. 

Till the manners of exotic ants are more accurately explored, it would, 
however, be rash to affirm that no ants have magazines of provisions ; for 
although, during the cold of our winters, in this country, they remain in 
a state of torpidity, and have no need of food, yet in warmer regions, 
during the rainy seasons, when they are probably confined to their nests, 
a store of provisions may be necessary for them.’ Even in northern 
climates, against wet seasons, they may provide in this way for their 
Sustenance and: that of the young brood, which, as Mr. Smeathman. 
observes, are very voracious, and cannot bear to be long deprived of their 
food ; else why do ants carry worms, living insects, and many other such 
things into their nests? Solomon’s lesson to’ the sluggard has been 
generally adduced as a strong confirmation of the ancient opinion: it can, 
however, only relate to the species of a warm climate, the habits of which, 
as I have just observed, are probably different from those of a cold one ;— 
so that his words, as commonly interpreted, may be perfectly correct and 
consistent with nature, and yet be not at all applicable to the species that 
are indigenous to Europe. But I think, if Solomon’s words are properly 
considered, it will be found that this interpretation has been fathered 
upon them, rather than fairly deduced from them. He does not affirm 
that the ant, which he proposes to his sluggard as an example, laid up in 
her magazines stores of grain: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider 
her ways and be wise; which, having neither captain, overseer, nor ruler, 
prepares her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.” 
These words may very well be interpreted simply to mean, that the ant, 
with commendable prudence and foresight, makes use of the proper 
seasons to collect a supply of provision sufficient for her purposes. 
There is not a word in them implying that she stores up grain or other 
provision. She prepares her bread, and: gathers her food,—namely, such 
food as is suited to her,—in summer and harvest,—that is, when it is most 
plentiful,—and thus shows her wisdom and prudence by using the advan- 
tages offered to her. The words thus interpreted, which they may be 
without any violence, will apply to our European species as well as to 
those that are not indigenous. 

_ I shall now bid farewell to the ancients, and proceed to lay before 
you what the observations of modern authors have enabled me to add to 

1 This supposition has been verified by Col. Sykes’s discovery at Poona in India of a 
species of ants (Atta providens Sykes), which store up-the seeds of a kind of grass ( Panicum) 
at the period of jheir being ripe in January and February, and which he saw them in June 
and October bringing up and exposing on the outside of their nests to the sun in heaps as 
big as a handful, apparently for the purpose of drying them after being wetted by the rains 
of the monsoon. (Trans, Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 103.) It does not seem easy to assign any 
plausible reason for the original collecting and storing, and subsequent drying and airing 
of these seeds, except on the supposition of their being intended in some way for food; and 
though we have no previously recorded instance of ants feeding on any other vegetable 
substance than such as are saccharine, yet, as all our experience proves how constantly in 
entomology exceptions are occurring to supposed general laws, there seems good reason to 


believe that this is one of them. (See the Rev. F. W. Hope’s remarks on this subject in 
Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 211.) 


30 


350 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


the history of ants:—the principle of these are Leeuwenhoek, Swam- 
merdam (who was the first that had recourse 6 artificial means for 
observing their proceedings), Linné, Bonnet, and especially the illustrious 
Swedish entomologist De Geer. Gould also, who, though no systematical 
naturalist, was a man of sense and observation, has thrown great light 
upon the history of ants, and anticipated several of what are accounted 
the discoveries of more modern writers on this subject.’ Latreille’s 
Natural History of Ants is likewise extremely valuable, not only as 
giving a systematic arrangement and descriptions of the species, but as 
concentrating the accounts of preceding authors, and adding several inter- 
esting facts ex proprio penu. The great historiographer of ants, how- 
ever, is M. P. Huber, who has lately published a most admirable and 
interesting work upon them, in which he has far outstripped all his prede- 
cessors. Such are the sources from which the following account of ants 
is principally drawn, intermixed with which you will find some oceasional 


1 M. P. Huber, in the account which, in imitation of De Geer, he has given of the dis- 
coveries made by his predecessors in the history of ants, having passed without notice, 
probably ignorant of the existence of such a writer, those of our intelligent countryman 
Gould, I shall here give a short analysis of them; from which it will appear that he was 
one of their best, or rather their very best historian, till M. Huber’s work came out. His 
Account of English Ants was published in 1747, long before “ Linné or De Geer had 
written upon the subject. 4 

I. Species. He describes five species of English ants; viz. 1. The hill ant (Formica rufa. 
L.) 2. The jet ant (Ff. fuliginosa Latr.) 3. The red ant (Myrmica rubra Latr., Formica 
Lin.) He observes, that this species alone is armed with a sting; whereas the others make 
a wound with their mandibles, and inject the formic acid into it. 4. The common yellow 
ant (F. flava Latr.). And 5. The small black ant (F. fusca L.). > 

Il. Egg. He observes that the eggs producing males and females are laid the earliest, 
and are the largest :—he seems, however, to have confounded the black and brown eggs of 
Aphides with those of ants. 

Ill. Larva. These, when first hatched, he observes, are hairy, and continue in the larva 
state twelve months or more. He, as well as De Geer, was aware that the larve of Myrmica 
rubra do not, as other ants do, spin a cocoon when they assume the pupa. 

IV. Pupa. He found that female ants continue in this state about six weeks, and males 
and neuters only a month. 

V. Imago. He knew perfectly the sexes, and was aware that females cast their wings 
previously to their becoming mothers; that at the time of their swarms large numbers of 
both sexes become the prey of birds and fishes; that the surviving females. sometimes in 
numbers, go under ground, particularly in mole hills, and lay eggs: but he had not dis- 
covered that they then act the part of nenters in the care of their progeny. He knew also, 
that when there was more than one queen in a nest, the rivals lived in perfect harmony. 

With respect to the nenters, he had witnessed the homage they pay their queens or fertile 
females continued even after their death ;—this homage he, however, observes, which is 
noticed by no other author, appears often to be temporary and local—ceasing at certain 
times, and being renewed upon a change of residence. He enlarges upon their exemplary 
care of the eggs, larve,and pup. He tells us that the eggs, as soon as laid, are taken by 
the neuters and deposited in heaps, and that the neuters brood them. He particularly 
notices their carrying them, with the larvee and pupe, daily from the interior to the surface 
of the nest and back again, according to the temperature; and that they feed the larve by 
disgorging the food from their own stomach. He-speaks also of their opening the cocoons 
when the pupe are ready to assume the imago, and disengaging them from them, With 
regard to their labors, he found that they work all night, except during violent rains; that 
their instinct varies as to the station of their nests ; that their masonry is consolidated by 
no cement, but consists merely of mould; that they form roads and trackways to and from 
their nests ; that they carry each other in sport, and sometimes lie heaped one on another 
in the sun. He suspects that they occasionally emigrate :—he proves by a variety of ex- 
periments that they do not hoard up provisions. He found they were often infested by a 
particular kind of Gordins :—he had noticed, also, that the neuters of F. rufa and flava 
(which escaped M. Huber, though he observed it in Polyergus rufescens Lair.) are of two 
sizes, Which the writer of this note can confirm by producing specimens ,—and, lastly, with 
Swammerdam, he had recourse to artiticial colonies, the better to enable him to examime 
their proceedings, but not comparable to the ingenious apparatus of M. Huber. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 351 


observations—which your partiality to your friend may, perhaps, induce 
you to think not wholly devoid of interest—that it has been my fortune 
to make. 

The societies of ants, as also of other Hymenoptera, differ from those 
of the Termites in having inactive larve and pupz, the neuters or workers 
combining in themselves both the military and civil functions. Besides 
the helpless larve and pup, which have no locomotive powers, thesé 
societies consist of females, males, and workers. The office of the females, 
at their first exclusion distinguished by a pair of ample wings, (which, 
however, as you have heard, they soon cast,) is the foundation of new 
colonies, and the furnishing of a constant supply of eggs for the mainte- 
nance of the population in the old nests as well as in the new. ‘These 
are usually the least numerous part of the community.!’ The oflice of 
the males, which are also winged, and at the time of swarming are 
extremely numerous, is merely the impregnation of the females: after the 
season for this is past, they die. Upon the workers devolves, except in 
nascent colonies, all the work, as well as the defence of the community, 
of which they are the most numerous portion. In some societies of ants 
the workers are of two dimensions. In the nests of F. rufa and flava 
such were observed by Gould, the size of one exceeding that of the other 
about one third. (In my specimens, the large workers of F’. rufa are 
nearly three times, and of FF. flava twice, the size of the small ones.) 
All were equally engaged in the labors of the colony. Large workers 
were also noticed by M. P. Huber in the nests of Polyergus rufescens*, 
but he could not ascertain their office. More light, however, has been of 
late thrown on this subject by the observations af M. Lacordaire and M. 
Lund upon these large workers, as they occur in the nests of South 
American ants. They have ascertained them to be strictly the soldzers, 
which, though of a different origin, like those of the Termites before 
described, have it expressly in charge to defend the rest of the community ; 
for which office their size—full twice that of the other workers—and their 
immense heads and jaws in proportion, admirably adapt them. M. Lacor- 
daire informs us that, both in Cayenne and Brazil, he has been a thousand 
times witness of the accuracy of the facts stated by M. Lund as to the 
military office of these large and big-headed workers of Atta cephalotes, 
and allied species, during the marches and excursions undertaken by the 
society. ‘They never mix themselves with the mass of the moving 
columns ; but, stationed on their flanks, they are seen sometimes to march 
forward ; then to return and halt a moment, as if to observe the troop 

1 Gould says that the males and females are nearly equal in number (p. 62.) ; but from 
Huber’s observations it seems to follow that the former are most numerous (p. 96.). 

* That the neuter ants, like those of the hive-bee, are imperfectly organized females, 
appears from the following observation of M. Huber (Nouv. Observ. &c. ii. 443.) —* Les 
fourmis nous ont encore offert & cet ¢gard une analogie trésfrappante; A la vérité, nous 
n’avons jamais vu pondre les ouvriéres, mais nous avons été témoins de leur accouplement. 
Ce fait pourroit étre attesté par plusieurs membres de la Société d’Histoire Naturelle de 
Genéve, A qui nous l’avons fait voir; approche du male étoit toujours suivie de la mort 
de Vouvriére ; leur conformation ne permet done pas qu’elles deviennent méres, mais 
Vinstinet du male prouve du moins que cesont des femelles.”’ 

? Gould, 103. 

4 M. Huber calls this an apterous female; 


and he owns that they more nearly rese 
should have considered them as such, had bh 


Huber, p. 251. 


J he could not discover that they laid eggs ; 
ed the workers than the females, and that he 
en. them mix with them in their excursions.— 


352 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


defile before them ; traversing its ranks; hastening to any point where 
their presence seems necessary, especially if it have*met with any obstacle 
on its route; and even climbing, as M. Lacordaire has often witnessed, 
up the adjoining plants, and, perched on the margin of a leaf, surveying 
its passage from this elevated position.! M. Lund observed four of these 
large-headed neuters of a Brazilian species of Myrmica to guard the 
entrance to their nest, and others attending the column while on march, 
and hastening to the spot and alarming their comrades when some of the 
ants were purposely killed.? 

An equally singular modification of form and function takes place in 
the neuters of a Mexican ant—Myrmecocystus Mexicanus of M. Wesmael, 
who has described their economy in a paper read to the Academie Royale 
of Brussels. Of this species, while some of the neuters have the ordinary 
form, others, which never quit the nest and are almost inactive, have their 
abdomen swollen into an immense subdiaphanous sphere, filled by a kind 
of honey which they are solely occupied in elaborating, and which they 
subsequently discharge into cells analogous to those of bees.? 

Having introduced you to the individuals of which the associations of 
ants consist, I shall now advert to the principal events of their history, 
relating first the fates of the males and females. In the warm days that 
occur from the end of July to the beginning of September, and sometimes 
later, the habitations of the various species of ants may be seen to swarm 
with winged insects, which are the males and females preparing to quit 
for ever the scene of their nativity and education. Every thing is in 
motion ; and the silver wings, contrasted with the jet bodies which com- 
pose the animated mass, add a degree of splendor to the interesting scene. 
The bustle increases, till at length the males rise, as it were by a general 
impulse, into the air, and the females accompany them. ‘The whole 
swarm alternately rises and falls with a slow movement to the height of 
about ten feet, the males flying obliquely with a rapid zigzag motion, and 
the females, though they follow the general movement of the column, 
appearing suspended in the air, like balloons, seemingly with no individual 
motion, and having their heads turned towards the wind. 

Sometimes the swarms of a whole district unite their infinite myriads, 
and, seen at a distance, produce an effect resembling the flashing of an 
aurora-borealis. Rising with incredible velocity in distinct columns, they 
soar above the clouds. Each column looks like a kind of slender net- 
work, and has a tremulous undulating motion, which has been observed to 
be produced by the regular alternate rising and falling just alluded to. 
The noise emitted by myriads and myriads of these creatures does not 
exceed the hum of a single wasp. The slightest zephyr disperses them ; 
and if in their progress they chance to be over your head, if you walk 
slowly on they will accompany you, and regulate their motions by yours. 
The females continue sailing majestically in the centre of these number- 
less males, who are all candidates for their favor, each till some fortunate 
lover darts upon her, and, as the Roman youth did the Sabine virgins, 
drags his bride from the sportive crowd, and the nuptials are consummated 

1 Lacordaire, Jatrod. dU’ Entom. ii. 498, * tg 

* Lund in Ann. des Sciences Nat. xxiii. 113.; quoted by Lacordaire, ubi supr. and West- 


wood, Mod. Class. ii, 225. F 
3 Bull. Acad. Roy. Bruzell. vy. 771. ; quoted by Westwood, ubi supr. ii. 225. 


‘i 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 353 


in mid-air; though sometimes the union takes place on the’ summit of 
plants, but rarely in the nests." After this danse de Pamour is celebrated, 
the males disappear, probably dying, or becoming, with many of the 
females, the prey of birds or fish?; for, since they do not return to the 
nest, they cannot be destroyed, as some have supposed, like the drone 
bees, by the neuters. That many, both males and females, become the 
prey of fish, I am enabled to assert from my own observation. In the 
beginning of August, 1812, I was going up the Orford river in Suffolk, in 
a row-boat, in the evening, when my attention was caught by an infinite 
number of winged ants, both males and females, at which the fish were 
every where darting, floating alive upon the surface of the water. While 
passing the river, these had probably been precipitated into it, either by 
the wind, or by a heavy shower which had just fallen. And M. Huber 
after the same event observed the earth strewed with females that had 
lost their wings, all of which could not form colonies.? 

Captain Haverfield, R. N., gave me an account of an extraordinary 
appearance of ants observed by him in the Medway, in the autumn of 
1814, when he was first-lieutenant of the Clorinde, which is confirmed by 
the following letter addressed by the surgeon of that ship, now Dr. Brom- 
ley, to Mr. MacLeay :— 

«In September, 1814, being on the deck of the hulk to the Clorinde, 
my attention was drawn to the water by the first-leutenant (Haverfield) 
observing there was something black floating down with the tide. On 
looking with a glass, I discovered they were insects. ‘The boat was sent, 
and brought a bucket full of them on board ;—they proved to be a large 
species of ant, and extended from the upper part of Salt-pan Reach out 
towards the Great Nore, a distance of five or six miles. The column 
appeared to be in breadth eight or ten feet, and in height about six inches, 
which I suppose must have been from their resting one upon another.” 
Purchas seems to have witnessed a similar phenomenon on shore. “ Other 
sorts (of ants),” says he, “there are many, of which some become winged 
and fill the air with swarms, which sometimes happens in England, On 
Bartholomew, 1613, I was in the island of Foulness on our Essex shore, 
where were such clouds of these flying pismires, that we could no where 
fly from them, but they filled our clothes ; yea the floors of some houses 
where they fell were in a manner covered with a black carpet of creeping 
ants; which they say drown themselves about that time of the year in 
the sea.’’* 

These ants were winged: whence, in the first instance here related, 
this immense column came was not ascertained. From the numbers here 
agglomerated, one would think that all the ant-hills of the counties of 
Kent and Surrey could scarcely have furnished a sufficient number of 
males and females to form it. , 

When Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, of the Horse Artillery, was survey- 
ing on the 6th of October, 1813, the scene of the battle of the Pyrenees 
from the summit of the mountain called Pena de Aya, or Les Quatre 
~ Couronnes, he and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of ants, so 
numerous as entirely to intercept their view, so that they were glad to 


remove to another station, in order to get rid of them. 


1 De Geer, ii. 1104. 2 Gould, 99. 3 Huber, 100. 4 Pilgrimage, 1090. « 
30* aie 


354 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


The females that escape from the injury of the elements and their 
various enemies become the founders of new coloniés, doing all the work, 
as I have related in a former letter, that is usually done by the neuters.? 
M. P. Huber has found incipient colonies, in which were only a few 
workers engaged with their mother in the care of a small number of larve ; 
and M. Perrot, his friend, once discovered a small nest, occupied by a 
solitary female, who was attending upon four pupe only. Such are the 
foundation and first establishment of those populous nations of ants with 
which we every where meet. 

But though the majority of females produced in a nest probably thus 
desert it, all are not allowed this liberty. The prudent workers are taught 
by their instinct that the existence of their community depends upon the 
presence of a sufficient number of females. Some, therefore, that are 
fecundated in or near the spot they forcibly detain, pulling off their wings, 
and keeping them prisoners till they are ready to lay their eggs, or are 
reconciled to their fate. De Geer in a nest of F. rufa observed that 
the workers compelled some females that were come out of the nest to 
re-enter it?; and from M. P. Huber we learn that, being seized at the 
moment of fecundation, they are conducted into the interior of the formi- 
cary, when they become entirely dependent upon the neuters, who hanging 
pertinaciously to each leg prevent their going out, but at the same time 
attehd upon them with the greatest care, feeding them regularly, and 
conducting them where the temperature is suitable to them, but never 
quitting them a single moment. By degrees these females become recon- 
ciled to their fate, and lose all desire of making their escape ;—their 
abdomen enlarges, and they are no longer detained as prisoners, yet each 
is still attended by a body-guard—a single ant, which always accompanies 
her, and prevents her wants. Its station is remarkable, it being mounted 
upon her abdomen, with its postericr legs upon the ground. ‘These senti- 
nels are constantly relieved ; and to watch the moment when the female 
begins the important work of oviposition, and carry off the eggs, of which 
she lays four or five thousand or more in the course of the year, seems to 
be their principal office. 

_ When the female is acknowledged as a mother, the workers begin to 

pay her a homage very similar to that which the bees render to their queen. 
All press round her, offer her food, conduct her by her mandibles through 
the difficult or steep passages of the formicary ; nay, they sometimes even 
carry her about their city ;—she is then suspended upon their jaws, the 
ends of which are crossed; and, being coiled up like the tongue of a 
butterfly, she is packed so close as to incommode the carrier but little. 
When she sets her down, others surround and caress her, one after another 
tapping her on the head with their antenne. “In whatever apartment,” 
says Gould, “a queen condescends to be present, she commands obedi- 
ence and respect. An universal gladness spreads itself through the whole 
cell, which is expressed by particular acts of joy and exultation. They 
have a particular way of skipping, leaping, and standing upon their hind- 
legs, and prancing with the others. These frolics they make use of, both 

1M. Huber observes that fecundated females, after they have lost their wings, make 
themselves a subterranean cell; some singly, others in common. From which it appears 


that some colonies have more than one female from their first establishment. 
2 ii. 1071. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 355 


to congratulate each other when they meet, and to show their regard for 
the queen ; some of them gently walk over her, others dance round her : 
she is generally encircled with a cluster of attendants, who, if you separate 
them from her, soon collect themselves into a body, and enclose her in 
the midst.”! Nay, even if she dies, as if they were unwilling to believe 
it, they continue sometimes for months the same attentions to her, and 
treat her with the same courtly formality as if she were alive, and they 
will brush her and Jick her incessantly.” 

This homage paid by the workers to their queens, according to Gould, 
is temporary and local ;—when she has laid eggs in any cell, their atten- 
tions, he observed, seemed to relax, and she became unsettled and uneasy. 
In the summer months she is to be met with in various apartments in the 
colony ; and eggs also are to be seen in several places, which induced him 
to believe that, having deposited a parcel in one, she retires to another for 
the same purpose, thus frequently changing her situation and attendants. 
As there are always a number of lodgments void of eggs, but full of 
ants, she is never at a loss for an agreeable station and submissive retinue ; 
and by the time she has gone her rounds in this manner, the eggs first 
laid are brought to perfection, and her old attendants are glad to receive 
her again. Yet this inattention after oviposition is not invariable; the 
female and neuter sometimes unite together in the same cell after the eggs 
are laid. On this occasion the workers divide their attention ; and if you 
disturb them, some will run to the defence of their queen, as well as of 
the eggs, which last, however, are the great objects of their solicitude. 
This statement differs somewhat from M. Huber’s; but different species 
vary in their instincts, which will account for this and similar dissonances 
in authors who have observed their proceedings. Mr. Gould also noticed 
but very few females in ant-nests, sometimes only one; but M. Huber, 
who had better opportunities, found several, which he says live very 
peaceably together, showing none of that spirit of rivalry so remarkable 
in the queen bee. ~ f 

And here I must close my narrative of the life and adventures of male 
and female ants; but, as it will be followed by a history of the still more 
interesting proceedings of the workers, I think you will not regret the 
exchange. I shall show these to you in many different views, under each 
of which you will find fresh reason to admire them and their wonderful 
instincts. My only fear will be lest you should think the picture too 
highly colored, and deem it incredible that creatures so minute should so 
far exceed the larger animals in wisdom, foresight, and sagacity, and 
make so near an approach in these respects to man himself. My facts, 
however, are derived from authorities so respectable, that I think they 
will do away with any bias of this kind that you may feel in your mind.° 

I need not here repeat what I have said in a former letter concerning 
the exemplary attention paid by these kind foster-mothers to the young 
brood of their colonies ; nor shall I enlarge upon the building and nature 


1 Gould, p. 24—. * Compare Gould, p. 25., with Huber, 125. note (1). 

3 It may be thought that many of the anecdotes related in the following history of the 
proceedings of neuter ants could not have been observed by any one, unless he had been 
admitted into an ant-hill; but it must be llected that M. P. Huber, from whose work 
the most extraordinary facts are copied, invented a kind of ant-hive, so constructed as to 
enable him to observe their proceedings without disturbing them. 


356 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


of their habitations, which have been already noticed :—but, without either 
of these, I have matter enough to fill the rest of thi8 letter with interest- 
ing traits, while I endeavor to teach you their language, to develop their 
affections and passions, and to delineate their virtues,—while I show them 
to you when engaged in war, and enable you to accompany them both in 
their military expeditions and in their emigrations,—while I make you a 
witness of their indefatigable industry and incessant labors, or invite 
you to be present, during their hours of relaxation, at their sports and 
amusements. 

That ants, though they are mute animals, have the means of communi- 
cating to each other information of various occurrences, and use a kind of 
language which is mutually understood, will appear evident from the fol- 
lowing facts. 

If those at the surface of a nest are alarmed, it is wonderful in how 
short a time the alarm spreads through the whole nest. It runs from 
quarter to quarter; the greatest inquietude seems to possess the community ; 
and they carry with all possible despatch their treasures, the larve and 
pup, down to the lowest apartments. Amongst those species of ants 
that do not go much from home, sentinels seem to be stationed at the 
avenues of their city. Disturbing once the little heaps of earth thrown 
up at the entrances into the nest of FE’. flava, which is of this description, 
I was struck by observing a single ant immediately come out, as if to see 
what was the matter, and this three separate times. 

The F. herculanea inhabits the trunks of hollow trees on the Continent 
(for it has not yet been found in England), upon which they are often 
passing to and fro. M. Huber observed, that when he disturbed those 
that were at the greatest distance from the rest, they ran towards them, 
and, striking their head against them, communicated their cause of fear or 
anger,—that these, in their turn, conveyed in the same way the intelligence 
to others, till the whole colony was in a ferment, those neuters which were 
within the tree running out in crowds to join their companions in the 
defence of their habitation. The same signals that excited the courage 
of the neuters produced fear in the males and females, which, as soon as 
the news of the danger was thus communicated to them, retreated into the 
tree as to an asylum. 

The legs of one of this gentleman’s artificial formicaries were plunged 
into pans of water, to prevent the escape of the ants ;—this proved a 
source of great enjoyment to these little beings, for they are a very thirsty 
race, and Jap water like dogs.'| One day, when he observed many of 
them tippling very merrily, he was so cruel as to disturb them, which sent 
most of the ants ina fright to the nest; but some more thirsty than the 
rest continued their potations. Upon this, one of those that had retreated 
returns to inform his thoughtless companions of their danger; one he 
pushes with his jaws; another he Strikes first upon the belly, and then 
upon the breast ; and so obliges three of them to leave off their carousing, 
and march homewards; but the fourth, more resolute to drink it out, is not 
to be discomfited, and pays not the least regard to the kind blows with 
which his compeer, solicitous for his safety, repeatedly belabors him. At 
length, determined to have his way, he seizes him by one of his hind-legs, 


1 Gould, 92. De Geer, ii. 1067. Huber, 5. 132. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 357 


and gives him a violent pull:—upon this, leaving his liquor, the loiterer 
turns round, and opening his threatening jaws with every appearance of 
anger, goes very cooly to drinking again; but his monitor without further 
ceremony, rushing before him, seizes him by his jaws, and at last drags 
him off in triumph to the formicary.’ 

The language of ants, however, is not confined merely to giving intel- 
ligence of the approach or presence of danger ; it is also coextensive with 
all their other occasions for communicating their ideas to each other. 

Some, whose extraordinary history I shall soon relate to you, engage in 
military expeditions, and often previously send out spies to collect infor- 
mation. These, as soon as they return from exploring the vicinity, enter 
the nest ; upon which, as if they had communicated their intelligence, the 
army immediately assembles in the suburbs of their city, and begins its 
march towards that quarter whence the spies had arrived. Upon the 
march, communications are perpetually making between the van and the 
rear; and when arrived at the camp of the enemy, and the battle begins, 
if necessary, couriers are dispatched to the formicary for reinforcements.” 

Tf you scatter the ruins of an ant’s nest in your apartment, you will be 
furnished with another proof of their language. The ants will take a 
thousand different paths, each going by itself, to increase the chance of 
discovery ; they will meet and cross each other in all directions, and per- 
haps will wander long before they can. find a spot convenient for their 
reunion. No sooner does any one discover a little chink in the floor, 
through which it can pass below, than it returns to its companions, and, 
by means of certain motions of its antenne, makes some of them compre- 
hend what route they are to pursue to find it, sometimes even accompany- 
ing them to the spot ; these, in their turn, become the guides of others, till 
all know which way to direct their steps.° 

It is well known, also, that ants give each other information when they 
have discovered any store of provision. Bradley relates a striking instance 
of this. A nest of ants in a nobleman’s garden discovered a closet, many 
yards within the house, in which conserves were kept, which they con- 
stantly attended till the nest was destroyed. Some in their rambles must 
have first discovered this depot of sweets, and informed the rest of it. It 
is remarkable that they always went to it by the same track, scarcely 
varying an inch from it, though they had to pass through two apartments ; 
nor could the sweeping and cleaning of the rooms discomfit them, or cause 
them to pursue a different route.* 

Here may be related an amusing experiment of Gould’s. Having 
deposited several colonies of ants (F’. fusca) in flower-pots, he placed 
them in some earthen ‘pans full of water, which prevented them from 
making excursions from their nest. When they had been accustomed 
some days to this imprisonment, he fastened small threads to the upper part 
of the pots, and extending them over the water pans fixed them in the 
ground. The sagacious ants soon found out that by these bridges they 
could escape from their moated castle. The discovery was communicated 
to the whole society, and in a short time the threads were filled with trains 
of busy workers passing to and fro.° 


7 


1 Huber, 133. , 2 Ibid. 167. 217. 237. 
3 Huber, 137. 4 Bradley, 134. 5 Gould, 85. 


358 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


Ligon’s account of the ants in Barbadoes affords another most convine- 
ing proof of this: as he has told his tale in a “lively and interesting 
manner, I shall give it nearly in his own words. 

«“'The next of these moving little animals are ants or pismires, and these 
are but of a small size, put great in industry ; and that which gives them 
means to attain to this end is, they have all one soul. If I should say 
they are here or there, I should do them wrong, for they are everywhere ; 
under ground, where any hollow or loose earth is; amongst the roots of 
trees; upon the bodies, branches, leaves, and fruit of all trees; in all 
places without the houses and within; upon the sides, walls, windows, 
and roofs without ; and on the floors, side-walls, ceilings, and windows 
within ; tables, cup-boards, beds, stools, all are covered with them, so 
that they are a kind of ubiquitaries. We sometimes kill a cockroach, 
and throw him on the ground; and mark what they will do with him: 
his body is bigger than a hundred of them, and yet they will find the 
means to take hold of him, and lift him up; and having him above ground, 
away they carry him, and some go by as ready assistants, if any be weary ; 
and some are the officers that lead and show the way to the hole into 
which he must pass ; and if the vancouriers perceive that the body of the 
cockroach lies across, and will not pass through the hole or areh through 
which they mean to carry him, order is given, and the body turned end- 
wise, and this is done a foot before they come to the hole, and that with- 
out any stop or stay ; and this is observable, that they never pull contrary 
ways. A table being cleared with great care, by way of experiment, of 
all the ants that were upon it, and some sugar being put upon it, some, 
after a circuitous route, were observed to arrive at it, when again departing 
without tasting the treasure, they hastened away to inform their friends of 
their discovery, who upon this came by myriads; and when they are 
thickest upon the table,” says he, ‘‘clap a large book (or any thing fit for 
that purpose) upon them, so hard as to kill all that are under it; and 
when you have done so, take away the book, and leave them to themselves 
but a quarter of an hour, and when you come again you shall find all 
those bodies carried away. Other trials we make of their ingenuity, as 
this :—take a pewter dish, and fill it half full of water, into which put a 
little gallypot filled with sugar, and the ants will presently find it and 
come upon the table; but when they perceive it environed with water, 
they try about the brims of the dish where the gallypot is nearest; and 
there the most venturous amongst them commits himself to the water, 
though he be conscious how ill a swimmer he is, and is drowned in the 
adventure: the next is not warned by his example, but ventures too, and 
is alike drowned; and many more, so that there is a small foundation of 
their bodies to venture ; and then they come faster than ever, and so 
make a bridge of their own bodies.’”! 

The fact being certain that ants impart their ideas to each other, we 
are next led to inquire by what means this is accomplished. It does not 
appear that, like the bees, they emit any significative sounds; their lan- 
guage, therefore, must consist of signs or gestures, some of which I shall 
now detail. In communicating their fear or expressing their anger, they 
run from one to another in a ‘semicircle, and strike with their head or 


) Hist. of Barbadoes, p. 63. 


* PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 359 
jaws the trunk or abdomen of the ant to which they mean to give informa- 
tion of any subject of alarm. But those remarkable organs, their antenne, 
are the principal instruments of their speech, if I may so call it, supply- 
ing the place both of voice and words. When the military ants before 
alluded to go upon their expeditions, and are out of the formicary, previ- 
ously to setting off they touch each other on the trunk with their antenne 
and forehead :—this is the signal for marching; for, as soon as any on@ 
has received it, he is immediately in motion. When they have any dis- 
covery to communicate, they strike with them those that they meet in 
a particularly impressive manner. If a hungry ant wants to be fed, it 
touches with its two antenne, moving them very rapidly, those of the 
individual from which it expects its meal; and not only ants understand 
this language, but even Aphides and Cocci, which are the milch kine of our 
little pismires, do the same, and will yield them their saccharine fluid at 
the touch of these imperative organs. The helpless larve also of the 
ants are informed by the same means when they may open their mouths 
to receive their food. 

Next to their language, and scarcely different from it, are the modes 
by which they express their affections and aversions. Whether ants, with 
man and some of the larger animals, experience any thing like attach- 
ment to individuals, is not easily ascertained ; but that they feel the full 
force of the sentiment which we term patriotism, or the love of the com- 
munity to which they belong, is evident from the whole series of their 
proceedings, which all tend to promote the general good. Distress or 
difficulty falling upon any member of their society generally excites their 
sympathy, and they do their utmost to relieve it. M. Latreille once cut 
off the antenne of an ant ; and its companions, evidently pitying its suffer- 
ings, anointed the wounded part with a drop of transparent fluid from 
their mouth ; and whoever attends to what is going forward in the neigh- 
borhood of one of their nests, will be pleased to observe the readiness 
with which they seem disposed to assist each other in difficulties. When 
a burthen is too heavy for one, another will soon come to ease it of part 
of the weight ; and if one is threatened with an attack, all hasten to the 
spot, to join in repelling it. 

The satisfaction they express at meeting after absence is very striking, 
and gives some degree of individuality to their attachment. M. Huber 
witnessed the gesticulations of some ants, originally belonging to the same 
nest, that, having been entirely separated from each other four months, 
were afterwards brought together. Though this was equal to one fourth 
of their existence as perfect insects, they immediately recognized each 
other, saluted mutually with their antenne, and united once more to form 
one family. 

They are also ever intent to promote each other’s welfare, and ready 
to share with their absent companions any good thing they may meet 
with. Those that go abroad feed those which remain in the nest ; and if 
they discover any stock of favorite food, they inform the whole commu- 
nity, as we have seen above, and teach them the way to it. M. Huber, 
for a particular reason, having produced heat, by means of a flambeau, 
in a certain part of an artificial formicary, the ants that happened to be 
in that quarter, after enjoying it for a time, hastened to convey the welcome 


360 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


intelligence to their compatriots, whom they even carried suspended upon 
their jaws (their usual mode of transporting e&ch other) to the spot, 
till hundreds might be seen thus Jaden with their friends. 

If ants feel the force of love, they are equally susceptible of the 
emotions of anger; and when they are menaced or attacked, no insects 
show a greater degree of it. Providence, moreover, has furnished them 
with weapons and faculties which render it extremely formidable to their 
insect enemies, and sometimes, as I have related in a former letter, a 
great annoyance to:man himself. ‘Two strong mandibles arm their mouth, 
with which they sometimes fix themselves so obstinately to the object of 
their attack, that they will sooner be torn limb from limb than let go their 
hold ; and after their battles, the head of a conquered enemy may often 
be seen suspended to the antenne or legs of the victor, a trophy of his 
valor, which, however troublesome, he will be compelled to carry about 
with him to the day of his death. Their abdomen is also furnished with 
a poison-bag (Joteriuwm), in which is secreted a powerful and venomous 
fluid, long celebrated in chemical researches, and called formic acid, 
which when their enemy is beyond the reach of their mandibles (1 speak 
here particularly of the hill-ant, or F’. rufa), standing erect on their hind 
legs, they ejaculate from their anus with considerable force, so that from 
the surface of the nest ascends a shower of poison, exhaling a strong 
sulphureous odor, suflicient to overpower or repel any insect or small 
animal. Such is the fury of some species, that with the acid, according 
to Gould?, they sometimes partly eject, drawing it back however directly, 
the poison-bag itself. Ifa stick be stuck into one of the nests of the 
hill-ant, it is so saturated with the acid as to retain the scent for many 
hours. A more formidable weapon arms the species of the genus Myr- 
mica Latr.; for, besides the poison-bag, they are furnished with a sting ; 
and their aspect is also often rendered peculiarly revolting by the extra- 
ordinary length of their jaws, and by the spines which defend their head 
and trunk. 

But weapons without valor are of but little use; and this is one distin- 
guishing feature of our pigmy race. Their courage and _ pertinacity are 
unconquerable, and often sublimed into the most inconceivable rage and 
fury. It makes no difference to them whether they attack a mite or an 
elephant ; and man himself instils no terror into their warlike breasts. 
Point your finger towards any individual of EF. rufa, instead of running 
away, it instantly faces about ; and, that it may make the most of itself, 
stiffening its legs into a nearly straight line, it gives its body the utmost 
elevation it is capable of, and thus 


“ Collecting all its might dilated sietiak ” 


prepared to repel your attack. Put your finger a little nearer, it immedi- 
ately opens its jaws to bite you, and rearing upon its hind legs bends its 
abdomen between them, to ejaculate its venom into the wound. 

This angry people, so well armed and so courageous, we may readily 
imagine, are not always at peace with their neighbors: causes of dissen- 
sion may arise to light the flame of war between the inhabitants of nests 


1 This acid may be prepared artifici: ally, and with all the properties of that produced by 
ants, by distillation from a mixture of sulphuric acid, black oxide of manganese, and starch. 
2 P. 34. ® See Fourcroy, Annales du Auseum, No. 5. 343. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 361 


not far distant from each other. 'To these little bustling creatures a 
square foot of earth is a territory worth contending for; their droves of 
Aphides equally valuable with the flocks and herds that cover our plains ; 
and the body of a fly or a beetle, or a cargo of straws and bits of stick, 
an acquisition as important as the treasures of a Lima fleet to our seamen. 
Their wars are usually between nests of different species ; sometimes, 
however, those of the same, when so near as to interfere with and incom-- 
mode each other, have their battles; and with respect to ants of one 
species Myrmica rubra, combats occasionally take place, contrary to the 
general habits of the tribe of ants, between those of the same nest. I 
shall give you some account of all these conflicts, beginning with the last. 
But I must first observe, that the only warriors amongst our ants are the 
neuters or workers ; the males and females being very peaceable creatures, 
and always glad to get out of harm’s way. 

The wars of the red ant (M. rubra) are usually between a small 
number of the citizens ; and the object, according to Gould, is to get rid 
of a useless member of the community (it does not argue much in favor 
of the humanity of this species if it be by sickness that this member is 
disabled), rather than any real civil contest. ‘The red colonies,” says 
this author, “ are the only ones I could ever observe to feed upon their own 
species. You may frequently discern a party of from five or six to twenty 
surrounding one of their own kind, or even fraternity, and pulling it to 
pieces. The ant they attack is generally feeble, and of a languid com- 
plexion, occasioned, perhaps, by some disorder or other accident.”? I 
once saw one of these ants dragged out of the nest by another, without its 
head; it was still alive, and could crawl about. A lively imagination 
might have fancied that this poor ant was a criminal, condemned by a 
court of justice to suffer the extreme sentence of the law. It was more 
probably, however, a champion that had been decapitated in an unequal 
combat; unless we admit Gould’s idea, and suppose it to have suffered 
because it was an unprofitable member of the community.? At another 
time I found three individuals that were fighting with great fury, chained 
together by their mandibles ; one of these had lost two of the legs of one 
side, yet it appeared to walk well, and was as eager to attack and seize 
its opponents as if it was unhurt. This did not look like languor or 
sickness. 

The wars of ants that are not of the same species take place usually 
between those that differ in size; and the great endeavoring to oppress 
the small are nevertheless often out-numbered by them, and defeated. 
Their battles have long been celebrated ; and the date of them, as if it 
were an event of the first importance, has been formally recorded. A®neas 
Sylvius, after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with 
great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree, 
gravely states, “This action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius IV., 
in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related 


1 Gould, 104. 

2 One would think the writer of the account of ants in Mouffet had been witness to 
something similar. ‘If they see any one idle,” says he, “ they not only drive him as spu- 
rious, without food, from the nest ; but likewise, a circle of all ranks being assembled, cut 
off his head before the gates, that he may be a warning to their children not to give them- 
selves up for the future to idleness and effeminacy.”— Theatr. Ins. 241. 


31 


362. PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity!” A similar 
engagement between great and small ants is recoffed by Olaus Magnus, 
in which the small ones being victorious are said to have buried the bodies 
of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the 
birds. ‘This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Chris- 
tiern II. from Sweden.} 

M. P. Huber is the only modern author that appears to have been 
witness to these combats. He tells us that, when the great attack the 
small, they seek to take them by surprise (probably to avoid their fasten- 
ing themselves to their legs), and, seizing upon them by the upper part of 
the body, they strangle them with their mandibles; but when the small 
have time to foresee the attack, they give notice to their companions, who 
rush in crowds to their succor. Sometimes, however, after suffering a 
signal defeat, the smaller species are obliged to shift their quarters, and to 
seek an establishment more out of the way of danger. In order to cover 
their march, many small bodies are then posted at a little distance from the 
nest. As soon as the large ants approach the camp, the foremost sentinels 
instantly fly at them with the greatest rage; a violent struggle ensues ; 
multitudes of their friends come to their assistance ; and, though no match 
for their enemies singly, by dint of numbers they prevail, and the giant is 
either slain or led captive to the hostile camp. ‘The species whose pro- 
ceedings M. Huber observed were F’. herculanea and F’. sanguinea, neither 
of which have yet been discovered in Britain.” 

But if you would see more numerous armies engaged, and survey war 
in all its forms, you must witness the combats of ants of the same species ; 
you must go into the woods where the hill-ant of Gould (£.. rufa) erects 
its habitations. There you will sometimes behold populous and rival 
cities, like Rome and Carthage, as if they had vowed each others destruc- 
tion, pouring forth their myriads by the various roads that, like rays, 
diverge on all sides from their respective metropolises, to decide by an 
appeal to arms the fate of their little world. As the exploits of frogs and 
mice were the theme of Homer’s muse, so, were I gifted like him, might I 
celebrate on this occasion the exhibition of Myrmidonian valor; but, 
alas! Iam Davus, not Gidipus ; you must, therefore, rest contented, if I 
do my best in plain prose ; and I trust you will not complain if, being 
unable to ascertain the name of any one of my heroes, my Myrmidonoma- 
chia be perfectly anonymous. 

Figure to yourself two of these cities equal in size and population, and 
situated about a hundred paces from each other; observe their countless 
number, equal to the population of two mighty empires. The whole 
space which separates them for the breadth of twenty-four-inches appears 
alive with prodigious crowds of their inhabitants. The armies meet 
midway between their respective habitations, and there join battle. Thou- 
sands of champions, mounted on more elevated spots, engage in single 
combat, and seize each other with their powerful jaws; a still greater 
number are engaged on both sides in taking prisoners, which make vain 
efforts to escape, as if conscious of the cruel fate which awaits them when 
arrived at the hostile formicary. The spot where the battle most rages 
is about two or three square feet in dimensions: a penetrating odor exhales 


, Mouffet, Theatr. Ins. 242, P Huber, 160. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 363 


on all sides,—numbers of ants are here lying dead covered with venom,— 
others, composing groups and chains, are hooked together by their legs 
or jaws, and drag each other alternately in contrary directions. ‘These 
groups are formed gradually. At first a pair of combatants seize each 
other, and rearing upon their hind legs mutually spirt their acid; then 
closing, they fall and wrestle in the dust. Again recovering their feety 
each endeavors to drag off his antagonist. If their strength be equal, 
they remain immovable till the arrival of a third gives one the advantage. 
Both, however, are often succored at the same time, and the battle still 
continues undecided ; others take part on each side, till chains are formed 
of six, eight, or sometimes ten, all hooked together, and struggling perti- 
nacious!y for the mastery : the equilibrium remains unbroken, till a number 
_of champions from the same nest arriving at once compel them to let go 
their hold, and the single combats recommence. At the approach of 
night, each party gradually retreats to its own city ; but before the follow- 
ing dawn the combat is renewed with redoubled fury, and occupies a 
greater extent of ground. These daily fights continue till violent rains 
separating the combatants, they forget their quarrel, and peace is restored. 

Such is the account given by M. Huber of a battle he witnessed. In 
these engagements, he observes, their fury is so wrought up, that nothing 
can divert them from their purpose. Though he was close to them 
examining their proceedings, they paid not the least attention to him, being 
absorbed by one sole object, that of finding an enemy to attack. What is 
most wonderful in this history,—though all are of the same make, color, 
and scent, every ant seemed to know those of his own party; and if by 
mistake one was attacked, it was immediately discovered by the assailant, 
and caresses succeeded to blows. Though all was fury and carnage 
in the space between the two. nests, on the other side the paths were 
full of ants going to and fro on the ordinary business of the society, as 
in a time of peace; and the whole formicary exhibited an appearance of 
order and tranquility, except that on the quarter leading to the field of 
battle crowds might always be seen, either marching to reinforce the 
army of their compatriots, or returning home with the- prisoners they 
had taken!, which it is to be feared are the devoted victims of a cannibal 
feast. 

Having, I apprehend, satiated you with the fury and carnage of Myr- 
midonian wars, I shall next bring forward a scene still more astonishing, 
which at first, perhaps, you will be disposed to regard as the mere illusion 
of a lively imagination. What will you say when I tell you that certain 
ants are affirmed to sally forth from their nests on predatory expeditions, 
for the singular purpose of procuring slaves to employ in their domestic 
business ; and that these ants are usually a ruddy race, while their slaves 
themselves are black? I think I see you here throw down my letter and 
exclaim—* What! ants turned slave-dealers! This is a fact so extraor- 
dinary and improbable, and so out of the usual course of nature, that 
nothing but the most powerful and convincing evidence shall induce me to 
believe it.” In this I perfectly approve your caution ; such a solecism in 
nature ought not to be believed till it has undergone the ordeal of a most 
thorough investigation. Unfortunately in this country we have not the 


1 See Huber, chap. v. 


364 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


means of satisfying ourselves by ocular demonstration, since none of the 
slave-dealing ants appear to be natives of Britain. e must be satisfied, 
therefore, with weighing the evidence of others. Hear what M. P. Huber, 
the discoverer of this almost incredible deviation of nature from her gene- 
ral laws, has advanced to convince the world of the accuracy of his 
statement; and you will, I am sure, allow that he has thrown over his 
history a coloring of verismilitude, and that his appeal to testimony is in a 
very high degree satisfactory. 

“‘ My readers,” says he, “ will perhaps be tempted to believe that I 
have suffered myself to be carried away by the love of the marvelous, and 
that, in order to impart greater interest to my narration, I have given way 
to an inclination to embellish the facts that I have observed. But the 
more the wonders of nature have attractions for me, the less do I feel 
inclined to alter them by a mixture of the reveries of imagination. Il 
have sought to divest myself of every illusion and prejudice, of the ambi- 
tion of saying new things, of the prepossessions often attached to percep- 
tions too rapid, the love of system, and the like. And I have endeavored 
to keep myself, if I may so say, in a disposition of mind perfectly 
neuter, and ready to admit all facts, of whatever nature they might be, 
that patient observation should confirm. Amongst the persons whom I 
have taken as witnesses to the discovery of mixed ant-hills, I can cite a 
distinguished philosopher (Prof. Jurine), who was desirous of verifying 
their existence by examining himself the two species united.” 

He afterwards appeals to nature, and calls upon all who doubt it to 
repeat his experiments, which he is sure will soon satisfy them,—a satis- 
faction which, as I have just observed, in this country we cannot receive, 
for want of the slave-making species. And now to begin my history. 

There are two species of ants which engage in these excursions, Poly- 
ergus rufescens and Formica sanguinea ; but they do not, like the African 
kings, make slaves of adults, their sole object being to carry off the help- — 
less infants of the colony which they attack, the larve and pupe; these 
they educate in their own nests till they arrive at their perfect state, when 
they undertake all the business of the society.?_ In the following account 
I shall chiefly confine myself to what Huber relates of the first of these 
species, and conclude my extracts with his history of an expedition of 
the latter to procure slaves. 

The rufescent ants* do not leave their nests to go upon these expedi- 
tions, which last about ten weeks, till the males are ready to emerge into 
the perfect state ; and it is very remarkable, that if any individuals attempt 
to stray abroad earlier, they are detained by their slaves, who will not 
suffer them to proceed :—a wonderful provision of the Creator to prevent 


? Huber, 287. Jurine, Hyménoptéres, 273. 

? It is not clear that our Willaghby had not some knowledge of this extraordinary fact ; 
for in his description of ants, speaking of their care of their pups, he says, “ that they also 
carry the aureli@ of others into their nests, as if they were their own.” (Rai. Hist. Ins. 69.) 
Gould remarks concerning the hill-ant, “‘ This species is very rapacious after the vermicles 
and nymphs of other ants. If you place a parcel before or near their colonies, they will, 
with remarkable greediness, seize and carry them off.’ 91. note*. Query—Do they do 
this to devour them, or educate them? White made the same observation (Nat. Hist. ti. 
278.). 

3 This species forms a kind of link which connects Latreille’s two genera Formica and 
Myrmica, borrowing the abdominal squama from the former, and the sting from the latter, 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 365 


the black colonies from being pillaged when they contain only male and 
female brood, which would be their total destruction, without being any 
benefit to their assailants, to whom neuters alone are useful. 

Their time of sallying forth is from two in the afternoon till five, but 
more generally a little before five: the weather, however, must be fine, 
and the thermometer must stand at above 36° in the shade. Previous] 
to marching there is reason to think that they send out scouts to explore 
the vicinity ; upon whose return they emerge from their subterranean city, 
directing their course to the quarter from which the scouts came. They 
have various preparatory signals, such as pushing each other with the 
mandibles or forehead, or playing with the antenne ; the object of which 
is probably to excite their martial ardor, to give the word for marching, or 
to indicate the route they are to take. The advanced guard usually 
consists of eight or ten ants; but no sooner do these get beyond the rest 
than they move back, wheeling round in a semicircle, and mixing with 
the main body, while others succeed to their station. They have “no 
captain, overseer, or ruler,’ as Solomon observes, their army being com- 
posed entirely of neuters, without a single female: thus all in their turns 
take their place at the head, and then, retreating towards the rear, make 
room for others. This is the usual order of their march; and the object 
of it may be to communicate intelligence more readily from one part of 
the column to another. 

When winding through the grass of a meadow they have proceeded to 
thirty feet or more from their own habitation, they disperse; and, like 
dogs with their noses, explore the ground with their antenne to detect the 
traces of the game they are pursuing. The negro formicary, the object 
of their search, is soon discovered: some of the inhabitants are usually 
keeping guard at the avenues, which dart upon the foremost of their 
assailants with inconceivable fury. The alarm increasing, crowds of its 
swarthy inhabitants rush forth from every apartment: but their valor is 
exerted in vain; for the besiegers, precipitating themselves upon them, 
by the ardor of their attack compel them to retreat within, and seek shel- 
ter in the lowest story ; great numbers entering with them at the gates, 
while others -with their mandibles make a breach in the walls, through 
which the victorious army marches into the besieged city. In a few 
minutes, by the same passages, they as hastily evacuate it, each carrying 
off in its mouth a larva or pupa which it has seized in spite of its 
unhappy guardians. On their return home with their spoil, they pursue 
exactly the route by which they went to the attack. ‘Their success on 
these expeditions is rather the result of their impetuosity, by which they 
damp the courage of the negroes, than of their superior strength, though 
they are a larger animal; for sometimes a very small body of them, not 
more than 150, has been known to succeed in their attack and to carry 
off their booty.? 


1 Since the publication of the first edition of this volume I ha¥e met with fresh confirma- 
tion of the extraordinary history here related. Having been induced to visit Paris, and 
calling upon M. Latreille (so justly celebrated as one of the first entomologists of the age, 
and to whom I feel infinitely indebted for the friendly attentions which he paid to me during 
my too short stay in that metropolis), he assured me, that he hac verified all the principal 
facts advanced by Huber. He has also said the same in his Considérations nouvelles et géné- 
rales sur les Insectes vivant en Société. (Mém. du Mus. iii. 407.) At the same time he 


31* 


366 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


When, from their proximity, they are more readily to be come at than 
those of the negroes, they sometimes assault with the same view the nest 
of another species of ant, which I shall call the miners (’. cunicularia), 

This species being more courageous than the other, on this account the 
rufescent host marches to the attack in closer order than usual, moving 
with astonishing rapidity. As soon as they begin to enter their habitation, 
myriads of the miners rushing out fall upon them with great fury ; while 
others, well aware of their purpose, making a passage through the midst 
of them, carry off in their mouth the larve and pupe. The surface of 
the nest thus becomes the scene of an obstinate conflict, and the assailants 
are often deprived of the prey which they had seized. The miners dart 
upon them, fight them foot to foot, dispute every inch of their territory, 
and defend their progeny with unexampled courage and rage. When the 
rufescents, laden with pillage, retire, they do it in close order—a precau- 
tion highly necessary, since ‘their valiant enemies, pursuing them, impede 
their progress for a considerable distance from their residence. 

During these combats the pillaged ant-hill presents in miniature the 
spectacle of a besieged city ; hundreds of its inhabitants may be seen 
making their escape, and carrying off in different directions, to a place of 
security, some the young brood, and others their females that are newly 
excluded: but when the danger is wholly passed, they bring them back 
to their city, the gates of which they barricade, and remain in great 
numbers near them to guard the entrance. 

Formica sanguinea, as I observed above, is another of the slave-making 


informed me that there was a nest of the rufescent ants in the Bois de Boulogne, to which 
place he afterwards was so good as to accompany me. We went on the 25th of June, 1817. 
The day was excessively hot and sultry. A little before five in the afternoon we began 
our search. At first we could not discern a single ant in motion. Ina minnte or two, 
however, my friend directed my attention to one individual—two or three more next ap- 
peared—and soon a numerous army was to be seen winding through the long grass of a 
low ridge in which was their formicary. Just at the entrance of the wood from Paris, on 
the right hand and near the road, is a bare place paled in for the Sunday amusement of the 
lower orders—to this the ants directed their march, and upon entering it divided into two 
columns, which traversed it rapidly and with great apparent eagerness ; all the while explor- 
ing the ground with their antenuz, as beagtes with their noses, evidently as if in pursuit of 
game. ‘Those in the van, as Huber also observed, kept perpetually falling back into the 
main body, When they had passed this inclosure, they appeared for some time to be ata loss, 
making no progress, but only coursing about: but after a few minutes’ delay, as if they had 
received souie intelligence, they resumed their march and soon arrived at a negro nest, which 
they entered by one or.two apertures. We could not observe that any negroes were expect 
ing their attack outside the nest, but in a short time a few came out at another opening, 
and seemed to be making their escape. Perhaps some conflict might have taken place 
within the nest, in the interval between the appearance of these negroes and the entry of 
their assailants. However this might be, in a few minutes one of the latter made its ap- 
pearance with a pupa in iis mouth; it was followed by three or four more; and soon the 
whole army began io emerge as fast as it could, almost every individual carrying its bur- 
then. Most that L observed seemed to have pupa. I then traced the expedition back to 
the spot from which I first saw them set out, which according to my steps was about 156 
feet from the negro formicary. The whole business was transacted in little more than an 
hour. Though I could trace the ants back to a certain spot in the ridge before mentioned, 
where they first appeared in the long grass, I did not sueceed in finding the entrance to their 
nest, so that I was deprived of the pleasure of seeing the mixed society. As we dined at 
an auberge close to the spot, I proposed renewing my researches afier dinner; but a violent 
tempest of thunder and rain, though I attempted it, prevented my succeeding ; and afier- 
wards | had no opportunity of revisiting the place. 

M. Latreille very justly observes that it is physically impossible for the rufescent ants 
( Polyergus rufescens), on account of the form of their jaws and the accessory parts of their 
mouth, either to prepare habitations for their family, to procure food, or to teed them.— 
Considérations nouvelles, Scc., p. 408. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 367 


ants ; and its proceedings merit separate notice, since they differ consider- 
ably from those of the rufescents. They construct their nests under 
hedges of a southern aspect, and likewise attack the hills both of the 
negroes and miners. On the 15th of July, at ten in the morning, Huber 
observed a small band of these ants sallying forth from their formicary, 
and marching rapidly to a neighboring nest of negroes, around which it 
dispersed. ‘The inhabitants, rushing out in crowds, attacked them and 
took several prisoners: those that escaped advanced no further, but 
appeared to wait for succors; small brigades kept frequently arriving to 
reinforce them, which emboldened them to approach nearer to the city 
they had blockaded; upon this their anxiety to send couriers to their own 
nest seemed to increase; these spreading a general alarm, a large re- 
inforcement immediately set out to join the besieging army ; yet even then 
they did not begin the battle. Almost all the negroes, coming out of their 
fortress, formed themselves in a body about two feet square in front of it, 
and there expected the enemy. Frequently skirmishes were the prelude 
to the main conflict, which was begun by the negroes. Long before 
success appeared dubious they carried off their pupe, and heaped them 
up at the entrance to their nest, on the side opposite to that on which the 
enemy approached. ‘The young females also fled to the same quarter. 
The sanguine ants at length rush upon the negroes, and attacking them on 
all sides, after a stout resistance the latter, renouncing all defence, endeavor 
to make off to a distance with the pupe they have heaped up:—the 
host of assailants pursues, and strives to force from them these objects of 
their care. Many also enter the formicary, and begin to carry off the 
young brood that ate left in it. A continued chain of ants engaged in 
this employment extends from nest to nest, and the day and part of the 
night pass before all is finished. A garrison being left in the captured 
city, on the following morning the business of transporting the brood is 
renewed. It often happens (for this species of ant loves to change its 
habitation) that the conquerers emigrate with all their family to the acqui- 
sition which their valor has gained. All the incursions of EF. sanguinea 
take place in the space of a month, and they make only five or six in the 
year. ‘They will sometimes travel 150 paces to attack a negro colony. 

After reading this account of expeditions undertaken by ants for so 
extraordinary a purpose, you will be curious to know how the slaves are 
treated in the nests of these marauders—whether they live happily, or 
labor under an oppressive yoke. You must recollect that they are not 
carried off, like our negroes, at an age when the amor patrié and all the 
charities of life which bind them to their country, kindred, and friends, 
are in their full strength, but in what may he called the helpless days of 
infancy, or in their state of repose, before they can have formed any 
associations or imbibed any notions that render one place and society more 
dear to them than another. Preconceived ideas, therefore, do not exist 
to influence their happiness, which must altogether depend upon the treat- 
ment which they experience at the hands of their new masters. Here 
the goodness of Providence is conspicuous ; which, although it has gifted 
these creatures with an instinct so extraordinary, and seemingly so unnatural, 
has not made it a source of misery to the objects of it. 

You will here, perhaps, imagine that I have not sufficiently taken into 


368 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


consideration the anxiety and privations undergone by the poor neuters, 
in beholding those foster-children, for which they ha®e all along manifested 
such tender solicitude, thus violently snatched from them: buat when you 
reflect that they are the common property of the whole colony, and that, 
consequently, there can scarcely be any separate attachment to particular 
individuals, you will admit that, after the fright and horror of the conflict 
are over, and their enemies have retreated, they are not likely to experi- 
ence the poignant affliction felt by parents when deprived of their children ; 
especially when you further consider, that most probably some of their 
brood are rescued from the general pillage ; or at any rate their females 
are left uninjuried, to restore the diminished population of their colonies, 
and to supply them with those objects of attention, the larve, &c., so 
necessary to that development of their instincts in which consists their 
happiness. 

But to return to the point from which I digressed.—The negro and 
miner ants_suffer no diminution of happiness, and are exposed to no 
unusual hardships and oppression in consequence of being transplanted 
into a foreign nest. ‘Their life is passed in much the same employments 
as would have occupied it in their native residence. They build or repair 
the common dwelling ; they make excursions to collect food; they attend 
upon the females; they feed them and the larve ; and they pay the 
necessary attention to the daily sunning of the eggs, larve, and pupa. 
Besides this, they have also to feed their masters and to carry them about 
the nest. This you will say is a serious addition to the ordinary occupa- 
tions of their own colonies: but when you consider the greater division of 
labor in these mixed societies, which sometimes unite both negroes and 
miners in the same dwelling, so that three distinct races live together, from 
their vast numbers so far exceeding those of the native nest, you will not 
think this too severe employment for so industrious an animal. 

But you will here ask, perhaps— Do the masters take no part in these 
domestic employments? At least, surely, they direct their slaves, and 
see that they keep to their work ?’—No such thing, I assure you—the 
sole motive for their predatory excursions seems to be mere laziness and 
hatred of labor. Active and intrepid as they are in the field, at all other 
times they are the most helpless animals that can be imagined ;—unwilling 
to feed themselves, or even to walk, their indolence exceeds that of the 
sloth itself. So entirely dependent, indeed, are they upon their negroes 
for every thing, that upon some occasions the latter seem to be the 
masters, and exercise a kind of authority over them. They will not 
suffer them, for instance, to go out before the proper season, or alone ; 
and if they return from their excursions without their usual booty, they 
give them a very indifferent reception, showing their displeasure (which, 
however, soon ceases) by attacking them; and when they attempt to 
enter the nest, dragging them out. To ascertain what they would do 
when obliged to trust to their own exertions, Huber shut up thirty of the 
rufescent ants in a glazed box, supplying them with larve and pupe of 
their own kind, with the addition of several negro pupz, excluding very 
carefully all their slaves, and placing some honey in a corner of their 
prison. Incredible as it may seem, they made no attempt to feed them- 
selves: and though at first they paid some attention to their larve, carry- 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 369 


ing them here and there, as if too great a charge they soon laid them 
down again; most of them died of hunger in less than two days, and 
the few that remained alive appeared extremely weak and languid. At 
length, commiserating their condition, he admitted a single negro; and 
this little active creature by itself re-established order—made a cell in the 
earth ; collected the larve and placed them in it; assisted the pupe that 
were ready to be developed; and preserved the life of the neuter rufes- 
cents that still survived. What a picture of beneficent industry, con- 
trasted with the baleful effects of sloth, does this interesting anecdote 
afford! Another experiment which he tried made the contrast equally 
striking. He put a large portion of one of these mixed colonies into a 
woolen bag, in the mouth of which he fixed a small tube of wood, glazed 
at the top, which at the other end was fitted to the entrance of a kind of 
hive. The second day the tube was crowded with negroes going and 
returning :—the indefatigable diligence and activity manifested by them 
in transporting the young brood and their refuscent masters, whose bodies 
were suspended upon their mandibles, was astonishing. These last took 
no active part in the busy scene, while their slaves showed the greatest 
anxiety about them, generally carrying them into the hive; and if they 
sometimes contented themselves with depositing them at the entrance of 
the tube, it was that they might use greater dispatch in fetching the rest. 
The rufescent when thus set down remained for a moment coiled up with- 
out motion, and then leisurely unrolling itself, looked all around, as if it was 
quite at a loss what direction to take ;—it next went up to the negroes, 
and by the play of its antenne seemed to implore their succor, till one of 
them attending to it conducted it into the hive. 

Beings so entirely dependent as these masters are upon their slaves, for 
every necessary, comfort, and enjoyment of their life, can scarcely be 
supposed to treat them with rigor or unkindness :—so far from this, it is 
evident from the preceding details, that they rather look up to them, and 
are in some degree under their control. 

The above observations, with respect to the indolence of our slave- 
dealers, relate principally to the rufescent species; for the sanguine ants 
are not altogether so listless and helpless; they assist their negroes in the 
construction of their nests, they collect their sweet fluid from the Aphides; 
and one of their most usual occupations is to lie in wait for a small species 
of ant, on which they feed; and when their nest is menaced by an 
enemy, they show their value for these faithful servants by carrying them 
down into the lowest apartments, as to a place of the greatest security. 
Sometimes even the rufescents rouse themselves from the torpor that 
usually benumbs them. In one instance, when they wished to emigrate 
from their own to a deserted nest, they reversed what usually takes place 
on such occasions, and carried all their negroes themselves to the spot 
they had chosen. At the first foundation also of their societies by im- 
pregnated females, there is good reason for thinking, that, like those of 
other species, they take upon themselves the whole charge of the nascent 
colony. I must not here omit a most extraordinary anecdote related by 
M. Huber. He put into one of his artificial formicaries pupe of both 
species of the slave-collecting ants, which, under the care of some negroes 


370 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


introduced with them, arrived at their imago state, and lived together 
under the same roof in the most perfect amity. © Mes 

These facts show what effects education will produce even upon insects ; 
that it will impart to them a new bias, and modify in some respects their 
usual instincts, rendering them familiar with objects which, had they been 
educated at home, they would have feared, and causing them to love those 
whom in that case they would have abhorred.—It occasions, however, no 
further change in their character, since the master and slave, brought up 
with the same care and under the same superintendence, are associated in 
the mixed formicary under laws entirely opposite. 

Unparalleled and unique in the animal kingdom as this history may 
appear, you will scarcely deem the next I have to relate less singular and 
less worthy of admiration. That ants should have their milch cattle is as 
extraordinary as that they should have slaves. Here, perhaps, you may 
again feel a fit of incredulity shake you ;—but the evidence for the fact I 
am now stating being abundant and satisfactory, I flatter myself it will not 
shake you long. ‘ 

The loves of the ants and the Aphides (for these last are the kine in ques- 
tion) have long been celebrated ; and that there is a connexion between 
them you may at any time, in the proper season, convince yourself; for 
you will always find the former very busy on those trees and plants on 
which the latter abound: and if you examine more closely, you will dis- 
cover that their object in thus attending upon them is to obtain the saccha- 
rine fluid, which may well be denominated their milk®, that they secrete. 

This fluid, which is scarcely inferior to honey in sweetness, issues in 
limpid drops from the abdomen of these insects, not only by the ordinary 
passage, but also by two setiform tubes placed, one on each side, just 
above it. Their sucker being inserted in the tender bark, is without inter- 
mission employed in absorbing the sap, which, after it has passed through 
the system, they keep continually discharging by these organs. When no 
ants attend them, by a certain jerk of the body, which takes place at regular 
intervals, they ejaculate it to a distance: but when the ants are at hand, 
watching the moment when the Aphides emit their fluid, they seize and 
suck it down immediately. This, however, is the least of their talents ; 
for they absolutely possess the art of making them yield it at their plea- 
sure ; or, in other words, of milking them. On this occasion their antenne 
are their fingers ; with these they pat the abdomen of the aphis on each 
side alternately, moving them very briskly; a little drop of fluid immedi- 
ately appears, which the ant takes into its mouth, one species (Myrmica 
rubra) conducting it with its antenne, which are somewhat swelled at the 
end. When it has thus milked one, it proceeds to another, and so on, till 
being satiated it returns to the nest. 

But you are not arrived at the most singular part of this history,—that 


? See Huber, chap. vii—xi. Mixed societies, similar to the above described, have been 
observed amongst exotic ants by M. Lund, who mentions a species of Myrmica ( M. paleata) 
found in Brazil, whose nest contains the neuters (doubtlessemployed as slaves, though un- 
fortunately M. Lund had not an opportunity of observing the excursions in which the pups 
they sprung from were captured) of a neighboring species, M. erythrothorax. (Lacordaire, 
Introd. a V Entom. ii. 503.) 

* The ant ascends the tree, says Linné, that it may milk its cows, the Aphides, not kill 
them. Syst. Nat. 962. Sp. 3. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 371 


ants make a property of these cows, for the possession of which they 
contend with great earnestness, and use every means to keep them to 
themselves. Sometimes they seem to claim a right to the Aphides that 
inhabit the branches of 4 tree or the stalks of a plant; and if stranger 
ants attempt to share their treasure with them, they endeavor to drive 
them away, and may be seen running about in a great bustle, and exhibit- 
ing every symptom of inquietude and anger. Sometimes, to rescue them 
from their rivals, they take their Aphides in their mouth ; they generally 
keep guard round them, and when the branch is conveniently situated, 
they have recourse to an expedient still more effectual to keep off inter- 
lopers,—they inclose it in a tube of earth or other materials, and thus 
confine them in a kind of paddock near their nest, and often communicat- 
ing with it. 

The greatest cow-keeper of all the ants is one to be met with in most 
of our pastures, residing in hemispherical formicaries, which are sometimes 
of considerable diameter. I mean the yellow ant of Gould (F. flava). 
This species, which is not fond of roaming from home, and likes to have 
all its conveniences within reach, usually collects in its nest a large herd 
of a kind of Aphis, that derives its nutriment from the roots of grass and 
other plants (Aphis radicum) ; these it transports from the neighboring 
roots, probably by subterranean galleries, excavated for the purpose, lead- 
ing from the nest in all directions!; and thus, without going out it has 
always at hand a copious supply of food. ‘These creatures share its 
care and solicitude equally with its own offspring. To the eggs it pays 
particular attention, moistening them with its tongue, carrying them in its 
mouth with the utmost tenderness, and giving them the advantage of the 
sun. This last fact I state from my own observation ; for once upon 
opening one of these ant-hills early in the spring, on a sunny day, I 
observed a parcel of these eggs, which I knew by their black color, very 
near the surface of thenest. My attack put the ants into a great ferment, 
and they immediately began to carry these interesting objects down into 
the interior of the nest. It is of great consequence to them to forward 
the hatching of these eggs as much as possible, in order to insure an early 
source of food for their colony; and they had doubtless in this instance 
brought them up to the warmest part of their dwelling with this view. 
M. Huber, in a nest of the same ant, at the foot of an oak, once found 
the eggs of Aphis Quercus. . 

Our yellow ants are equally careful of their Aphides after they are 
hatched; when their nest is disturbed conveying them into the interior ; 
fighting fiercely for them if the inhabitants of neighboring formicaries, as 
is sometimes the case, attempt to make them their prey; and carrying 
them about in their mouths to change their pasture, or for some other 
purpose. When you consider that ‘from them they receive almost the 
whole nutriment both of themselves and larve, you will not wonder at 
their anxiety about them, since the wealth and prosperity of the commu- 
nity is in proportion to the number of their cattle. Several other species 
keep Aphides in their nests, but none in such numbers as those of which 
I am speaking.” . 

» Huber, 195. Ihave more than once found these Aphides in the nests of this species 


of ant. 
2 See Huber, chap. vi. I have found Aphides in the nest of Myrmica rubra. Boisier de 


372 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


Not only the Aphides yield this repast to the ants, but also the Cocci, 
with whom they have recourse to similar manceuvrés, and with equal suc- 
cess; only in this case the movement of the antenne over their body may 
be compared to the thrill of the finger over the keys of a piano-forte ; 
and in the tropical regions of India and Brazil (where no Aphides occur) 
it appears, from the observations of General Hardwicke, M. Lund, M. 
Bescke, and MM. Spix and Martius, that the ants milk the larve and 
pup of various species of Cercopis and Membracis.‘ But what is still 
more extraordinary, even beetles are occasionally made cows of by Formica 
flava, the yellow ant, which, according to Miller’s very curious account of 
its habits, confirmed by M. Wesmael, keeps in its nest the singular little 
Claviger foveolatus (which Mr. Westwood has discovered in this abode 
in England), and obtains from the bristles terminating its elytra a gummy 
secretion which it uses for food, as it does that obtained from Aphides, 
feeding the Clavigers in return for this service, and carefully guarding 
them from straying, which if they attempt it seizes them with its jaws.” 
Their herds of these hard-coated yellow cattle are often numerous ; for 
when paying a visit in 1829 to my friend Professor Germar at Halle in 
Prussia, he showed me a whole row of specimens from which he begged 
me to select at pleasure, all of which, if I recollect right, he had obtained 
from one ant’s nest. It is probable that another species of Claviger (C. 
longicornis,) which M. Robert found also in an ant’s nest, is made a simi- 
lar use of by them. 

One of the singular circumstances in the history of ants, and which 
requires further explanation, is, that besides the two beetles just named, 
many other species of the same tribe, mostly of small size, are also found 
in their nests, and so constantly, that it cannot arise from accident. My 
friend M. Chevrolat of Paris, who has been more successful in procuring 
new and rare coleopterous insects from this habitat than perhaps any 
other entomologist, has obtained the greatest number from the nests of 
Formica rufa Latr., in which he has found Lomechusa strumosa and den- 
tata, a new species of Xantholinus, Dendrophilus pygmaeus Payk., D. 
formicetorum Aubé, and D. Guerini Chevr., and Monotoma conicollis, and 
M. formicetorum Chevr. He has also found several specimens of Lome- 
chusa paradoxa in the nest of Formica cunicularia Latr., and Abreus 
globulus Payk., Batrisus formicarius De la Porte, and B. oculatus, and 
B. venustus Aubé, as well as his singular new insect Myrmechixenus 
subterraneus, in other nests; and M. Reiche has also found Heterius 
quadratus in the nest of Myrmica unifasciata, as has Mr. MacLeay a crepi- 
tating species of Cerapterus in ants’ nests in Australia.® Besides the 
above, M. Chevrolat has observed in some of these ants’ nests isolated 
larve, as he supposes, of a Clythra, clothed with a case of gluten com- 
bined with particles of earth and small stonest; and Mr. Westwood states 
that he has often found in the nests both of Formica and Myrmice many 
very young specimens of a white color of a species of Oniscus, of which 
genus also, M. Lund in Brazil observed many of the ants of a column of 


Sauvages speaks of ants keeping their own Aphides, and gives an interesting account of 
them. Journ. de Physique, i. 195. 

1 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 239. 434, 

2? Germar, Magazin der Entom. iii. t. 2. Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. i. 176. 

3 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. i. xii. 4 Silbermann, Revue Entom, iii. 263. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 373 


Myrmica typhlos to carry each an individual beneath the abdomen.’ ‘Thus 
we have sixteen or seventeen coleopterous insects of different genera and 
species, besides one or more species of Oniscus, habitually residing in ants’ 
nests; but whether these, like the Clavigers, are subservient to the pur- 
poses of the ants, or whether they make the ants subservient to theirs, or 
what is the precise object of the companionship, must be left for future 
investigation, and are points to which I would,strongly recommend your 
attention.” 

When the population exceeds the produce of a country, or its inhab- 
itants suffer oppression, or are not comfortable in it, emigrations frequently 
take place, and colonies issue forth to settle in other parts of the globe; 
and sometimes whole nations leave their own country, either driven to this 
step by their enemies, or excited by cupidity to take possession of 
what appears to them a more desirable residence. ‘These motives ope- 
rate strongly on some insects of the social tribes. Bees and ants are 
particularly influenced by them. The former, confined in a narrow hive, 
when their society becomes too numerous to be contained conveniently in 
it, must necessarily send forth the redundant part of their population to 
seek for new quarters; and the latter—though they usually can enlarge 
their dwelling to any dimensions which their numbers may require, and 
therefore do not send forth colonies, unless we may distinguish by that 
name the departure of the males and females from the nest—are often 
disgusted with their present habitation, and seek to establish themselves 
in a new one:—either the near neighborhood of enemies of their own 
species ; annoyance from frequent attacks of man or other animals ; their 
exposure to cold or wet from the removal of some species of shelter ; or 
the discovery of a station better circumstanced or more abundant in aphi- 
des ;—all these may operate as inducements to them to change their 
residence. That this is the case might be inferred from the circumstance 
noticed by Gould’, which I have also partly witnessed myself, that they 
sometimes transport their young brood to a considerable distance from 
their home. But M. Huber, by his interesting observations, has placed 
this fact beyond all controversy; and his history of their emigrations is 
enlivened by some traits so singular, that I am impatient to relate them to 
you. They concern chiefly the great hill-ant (F. rufa), though several 
other species occasionally emigrate. 

Some of the neuters having found a spot which they judge convenient 
for a new habitation, apparently without consulting the rest of the society, 
determine upon an emigration, and thus they compass their intention :— 
The first step is to raise recruits: with this view they eagerly accost 
several fellow citizens of their own order, caress them with their antenne, 


1 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins. ii. 234, 

2 As there can be little doubt that several of M. Chevrolat’s insects might be found in 
ants’ nests in this country, as well as Claviger foveolatus, if sought for in the way which 
this indefatigable entomologist employs, it may not be amiss to indicate his mode of pro- 
cedure. Before attacking an ants’ nest he ties the legs of his pantaloons over his boots and 
puts on gloves, and then proceeds to shovel the whole contents of the nest (of course to the 
very bottom) into a bag, of the contents of which he spreads successive portions upon a 
cloth so as to allow the ants to escape, and afterwards examines what remains at his lei- 
sure. M. Markel has recently published a memoir on the coleopterous insects found in 
ants’ nests in Saxon Switzerland, amounting to nearly fifty species. (Germar’s Zeitschrift, 
iii. 203.) 

3 Gould, 42. 

32 


374 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


lead them by their mandibles, and evidently appear to propose the jour- 
ney to them. If they seem disposed to accompany them, the recruiting 
officer, for so he may be called, prepares to carry off his recruit, who, 
suspending himself upon his mandibles, hangs coiled up spirally under 
his neck ;—all this passes in an amicable manner after mutual salutations. 
Sometimes, however, the recruiter takes the other by surprise, and drags 
him from the ant-hill without giving him time to consider or resist. 
When arrived at the proposed habitation, the suspended ant uncoils itself, 
and, quitting its conductor, becomes a recruiter in its turn. The pair 
return to the old nest, and each carries off a fresh recruit, which being 
arrived at the spot joins in the undertaking :—thus the number of 
recruiters keeps progressively increasing, till the path between the new 
and the old city is full of goers and comers, each of the former laden 
with a recruit. What a singular and amusing scene is then exhibited of 
the little people thus employed! When an emigration of a rufescent 
colony is going forward, the negroes are seen carrying their masters; and 
the contrast of the red with the black renders it peculiarly striking. 
The little turf-ants (Myrmica ? caspitum) upon these occasions carry their 
recruits uncoiled, with their head downwards and their body in the air. 
This extraordinary scene continues several days; but when all the 
neuters are acquainted with the road to the new city, the recruiting 
ceases. As soon as a sufficient number of apartments to contain them 
are prepared, the young brood, with the males and females, are conveyed 
thither, and the whole business is concluded. When thespot thus selected 
for their residence is at a considerable distance from the old nest, the ants 


construct some intermediate receptacles, resembling small ant-hills, con- 


sisting of a cavity filled with fragments of straw and other materials, in 
which they form several cells; and here at first they deposit their recruits, 
males, females, and brood, which they afterwards conduct to the final 
settlement. These intermediate stations sometimes become permanent 
nests, which, however, maintain a connection with the capital city. 

While the recruiting is proceeding it appears to occasion no sensation 
in the original nest; all goes on in it as usual, and the ants that are not 
yet recruited pursue their ordinary occupations: whence it is evident that 
the change of station is not an enterprise undertaken by the whole com- 
munity. Sometimes many neuters set about this business at the same 
time, which gives a short existence (for in the end they all re-unite into 
one) to many separate formicaries. Ifthe ants dislike their new city, they quit 
it fora third, and even for a fourth: and what is remarkable, they will 
sometimes return to their original one before they are entirely settled in 
the new station; when the recruiting goes in opposite directions, and 
the pairs pass each other on the road. You may stop the emigration 
for the present, if you can arrest the first recruiter, and take away his 
recruit., 

These European emigrations, however, are somewhat insignificant 
when compared with those which the neuters of some of the tropical 


? Walking one day early in July in a spot where I used to notice a single nest of Formica 
rufa I observed that a new colony had been formed of considerable magnitude ; and between 
it and the original nest were six or seven smaller settlements. 

® See Huber, chap. iv. § 3. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 375 


species undertake, the extent of which would be incredible if not so well 
authenticated. M. Lund states that he once followed one of these vast 
hosts for five days; and M. Lacordaire informs us that when in Cayenne 
he saw a migratory army of this description pass his residence which was 
about a hundréd paces broad, and which occupied more than a day and 
a half in passing, though the ants marched rapidly and made no halt. It 
is to a species of the ants making these migrations, that Madame Merian 
gave the name of Ants of Visitation, before alluded to, as so useful by 
entering all the houses on their march, and clearing them of all noxious 
insects or other animals. M. Lacordaire, however, denies that any such 
object actuates these migrating ants, which he says often pass houses with- 
out entering them; and that when they do, it is for want of food on their 
route, though he admits that in this case they leave no living animal in the 
houses which they visit, as he himself once witnessed at Cayenne.' But 
whatever may be the fact as to the migrating ants of Cayenne, the Chas- 
seur-Ants of Trinidad would seem to migrate for the express purpose of 
scouring human habitations for food, according to the aceount given by .Mrs. 
Carmichael, which presents so graphic a picture of their proceedings, that 
I shall give it to you entire, especially as its minute and circumstantial 
details seem to vouch for its accuracy :— 


“One morning my attention was arrested at Laurel Hill by an unusual 
number of black birds, whose appearance was foreign to me: they were 
smaller, but not unlike an English crow ; and were perched on a calibash- 
tree near the kitchen. I asked the house-negress, who at that moment 
came up from the garden, what could be the cause of the appearance of 
those black birds? She said, “‘ Misses, dem be a sign of the blessing of 
God; dey are not de blessing, but only de sign, as we say, of God’s 
blessing. Misses, you’ll see afore noon-time how the ants will come and 
clear the houses.’ At this moment I was called to breakfast, and think- 
ing it was some superstitious idea of hers, I paid no further attention to it. 

“In about two hours after this, I observed an uncommon number of 
chasseur-ants crawling about the floor of the room: my children were 
annoyed by them, and seated themselves on a table, where their legs did 
not communicate with the floor. ‘The ants did not crawl upon my person, 
but I was now surrounded by them. Shortly after this, the walls of the 
room became covered by them; and next they began to take possession 
of the tables and chairs. I now thought it necessary to take refuge in an 
adjoining room, separated only by a few ascending steps from the one we 
occupied, and this was not accomplished without great care and general- 
ship, for had we trodden upon one we should have been summarily 
punished. There were several ants on the step of the stair, but they 
were not nearly so numerous as in the room we had left; but the upper 
room presented a singular spectacle, for not only were the floor and the 
walls covered like the other room, but the roof was covered also. 

«The open rafters of a West India house at all times afford shelter to 
a numerous tribe of insects, more particularly the cockroach; but now 
their destruction was inevitable. The chasseur-ants, as if trained for 
battle, ascended in regular, thick files, to the rafters, and threw down the 


1} Lacordaire, Introd. a l’ Entom. ii. 504. 


376 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


cockroaches to their comrades on the floor, who as regularly marched off 
with the dead bodies of cockroaches, dragging thefi away by their united 
efforts with amazing rapidity. Either the cockroaches were stung to 
death on the rafters, or else the fall killed them. The ants never stopped 
to devour their prey, but conveyed it all to their storehouses. 

«The windward windows of this room were of glass, and a battle now 
ensued between the ants and the jack-spaniards on the panes of glass. 
The jack-spaniard may be called the wasp of the West Indies ; it is twice 
as large as a British wasp, and its sting is in proportion more painful: it 
builds its nests in trees and old houses, and sometimes in the rafters of a 
room. These jack-spaniards were not quite such easy prey as the cock- 
roaches had been, for they used their wings, which not one cockroach had 
attempted to do. Two jack-spaniards, hotly pursued on the window, 
alighted on the dress of one of my children. I entreated her to sit still, 
and remain quiet. In an inconceivably short space of time, a party of 
ants crawled upon her frock, surrounded, covered the two jack-spaniards, 
and crawled down again to the floor, dragging off their prey, and doing 
the child no harm. 

“Fyom this room I went to the adjoining bed-chamber and dressing- 
room, and found them equally in possession of the chasseurs. J opened 
a large military chest full of linen, which had been much infested ; for I 
was determined to take every advantage of such able hunters. I found 
the ants already inside; I suppose they must have got in at some opening 
at the hinges. I pulled out the linens on the floor, and with them hun- 
dreds of cockroaches, not one of which escaped. 

«“ We now left the house, and went to the chambers built at a little 
distance; but these also were in the same state. I next proceeded to 
open a store-room at the end of the other house for a place of retreat ; 
but, to get the key, I had to return to the under room, where the battle 
was now more hot than ever. The ants had commenced an attack upon 
the rats and mice, which, strange as it may appear, were no match for 
their apparently insignificant foes. They surrounded them as they had 
the insect tribe, covered them over, and dragged them off with a celerity 
and union of strength, that no one who has not watched such a scene can 
comprehend. I did not see one rat or mouse escape, and I am sure I 
saw a score carried off during a very short period. We next tried the 
kitchen, for the store-room and boy’s pantry were already occupied ; but 
the kitchen was equally the field of battle, between rats, mice, cock- 
roaches, and ants killing them. A huckster negro came up selling cakes ; 
and seeing the uproar, and the family and servants standing out in the 
sun, he said, ‘ Ah, misses, you’ve got the blessing of God to-day, and a 
great blessing it is to get such a cleaning.’ 

“‘T think it was about ten when I first observed the ants; about twelve 
the battle was formidable; soon after one o’clock the great strife began - 
with the rats and mice; and about three the houses were cleared. In a 
quarter of an hour more the ants began to decamp, and soon not one was 
to be seen within doors. But the grass round the house was full of them ; 
and they seemed now feasting on the remnants of their prey, which had 
been left on the road to their nests; and so the feasting continued till 
about four o’clock, when the black birds, who had never been long absent 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 377 


from the calibash and poisdour trees in the neighborhood, darted down 
among them, and destroyed by millions those who were too sluggish 
to make good their retreat. By five o’clock the whole was over ; before 
sun-down, the negro-houses were all cleared in the same way; and they 
told me that they had seen the black birds hovering about the almond 
trees close to the negro-houses, as early as seven in the morning. I never 
saw those black birds before or since, and the negroes assured me that 
they were never seen but at such times.” 


I shall now relate to you some other portions of Myrmidonian History, 
which, thouch perhaps not so striking and wonderful as the preceding details, 
are not devoid of interest, and will serve to exemplify their incredible 
diligence, labor, and ingenuity. 

In this country it is commonly in March, earlier or later according to 
the season, that ants first make their appearance, and they continue their 
labors till the middle or latter end of October. ‘They emerge usually 
from their subterranean winter-quarters on some sunny day; when, 
assembling in crowds on the surface of the formicary, they may ‘be 
observed in continual motion, walking incessantly over it and one another, 
without departing from home; as if their object, before they resumed their 
employments, was to habituate themselves to the action of the air and sun.? 
This preparation requires a few days, and then the business of the year 
commences. ‘The earliest employment of ants is most probably to repair 
the injuries which their habitation has received during their state of inac- 
tivity: this observation more particularly applies to the hill-ant (F. rufa), 
all the upper stories of whose dwellings are generally laid flat by the 
winter rains and snow; but every species, it may well be supposed, has 
at this season some deranged apartments to restore to order, or some 
demolished ones to rebuild. 

After their annual labors are begun, few are ignorant how incessantly 
ants are engaged in building or repairing their habitations, in collecting 
provisions, and in the care of their young brood; but scarcely any 
are aware of the extent to which their activity is carried, and that their 
labors are going on even in the night. Yet this is a certain facts Long 
ago Aristotle affirmed that ants worked in the night when the moon was 
at the full?; and their historian Gould observes, “that they even exceed 
the painful industrious bees. For the ants employ each moment, by day 
and night, almost without intermission, unless hindered by excessive 
rains.”* M. Huber also, speaking of a mason-ant, not found with us, 
tells us that they work after sunset, and in the night.? To these I can 
add some observations of my own, which fully confirm these accounts. 
My first were made at nine o’clock at night, when I found the inhabitants 
bf a nest of the red ant (Myrmica rubra) very busily employed; I 
repeated the observation, which I could conveniently do, the nest being 
in my garden, at various times from that hour till twelve, and always 
found some going and coming, even while a heavy rain was falling. 
Having in the day noticed some Aphides upon a thistle, I examined it 


1 Mrs. Carmichael on the West Indies, quoted in Saturday Magazine, 1833, p. 150. 
2 Gould, 67. De Geer, ii. 1054. 3 Hist. Animal. 1. ix. c. 38. 4 Gould, 68. 
5 Huber, 35. 42. 

32* 


378 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


again in the night, at about eleven o’clock, and found my ants busy milk- 
ing their cows, which did not for the sake of reposé@intermit their suction. 
At the same hour another night, I observed the little negro-ant (F’. fusca) 
engaged in the same employment upon an elder. About two miles from 
my residence was a nest of Gould’s hill-ant (EF. rufa), which, according 
to M. Huber, shut their gates, or rather barricade them, every night, and 
remain at home.) Being desirous of ascertaining the accuracy of his 
statement, early in October, about two o’clock one morning, I visited this 
nest in company with an intelligent friend; and to our surprise and admi- 
ration we found our ants at work, some being engaged in carrying their 
usual burden, sticks and straws, into their habitation, others going out 
from it, and several were climbing the neighboring oaks, doubtless to milk 
their Aphides.. The number of comers and goers at that hour, however, 
was nothing compared with the myriads that may always be seen on these 
nests during the day. It so happened that our visit was paid while the 
moon was near the full; so that whether this species is equally vigilant 
and active in the absence of that luminary yet remains uncertain. Per- 
haps this circumstance might reconcile Huber’s observation with ours, and 
confirm the accuracy of Aristotle’s statement before quoted. ‘To the red 
ant, indeed, it is perfectly indifferent whether the moon shine or not; 
they are always busy, though not in such numbers as during the day. It 
is probable that these creatures take their repose at all hours indifferently ; 
for it cannot be supposed that they are employed day and night without rest. 

I have related to you in this and former letters most of the works and 
employments of ants, but as yet I have given you no account of their 
roads and trackways. Don’t be alarmed, and imagine I am going to 
repeat to you the fable of the ancients, that they wear a path in the 
stones”; for I suppose you will scarcely be brought to believe that, as 
Hannibal cut a way for the passage of his army over the Alps by means 
of vinegar, so the ants’may with equal effect employ the formic acid: but 
more species than one do really form roads which lead from their formi- 
caries into the adjoining country. Gould, speaking of his jet-ant (F. fuli- 
ginosa,) says that they make several main track-ways (streets he calls 
them), with smaller paths striking off from them, extending sometimes to 
the distance of forty feet from their nest, and leading to those spots in 
which they collect their provisions; that upon these roads they always 
travel, and are very careful to remove from them bits of sticks, straw, or 
any thing that may impede their progress ; nay, that they even keep low 
the herbs and grass which grow in them, by constantly biting them off, 
so that they may be said to mow their walks. But the best constructors 
of roads are the hill-ants (fF. rufa). Of these De Geer says, “ When 
you keep yourself still, without making any noise, in the woods peopled 
with these ants, you may hear them very distinctly walking over the dry 
leaves which are dispersed upon the soil, the claws of their feet producing 
a slight sound when they lay hold of them. They make in the ground 
broad paths, well beaten, which may be readily distinguished, and which 
are formed by the going and coming of innumerable ants, whose custom 
it is always to travel in the same route.”* From Huber we further learn 


1 Huber, 23. 2 Plin. Hist. Nat. lxi. c. 29. 3 Gould, 87. 
4 De Geer, ii. 1067. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 379 


that these roads of the hill-ants are sometimes a hundred feet in length, 
and several inches wide; and that they are not formed merely by the 
tread of these creatures, but hollowed out by their labor.!_ Virgil alludes 
to their tracks in the following animated lines, which, though not altogether 
correct, are very beautiful :— 
“So when the pismires, an industrious train, 

Embodied rob some golden heap of grain, 

Studious ere stormy winter frowns to lay 

Safe in their darksome cells the treasured prey ; 

In one long track the dusky legions lead 

Their prize in triumph through the verdant mead ; 

Here, bending with the load, a panting throng 

With force conjoin’d heave some huge grain along. , 

Some Jash the stragglers to the task assign’d, 

Some to their ranks the bands that lag behind : 

They crowd the peopled path in thick array, 

Glow at the work, and darken all the way.” 
Bonnet, observing that ants always keep the same track both in going 
from and returning to their nest, imagines that their paths are imbued 
with the strong scent of the formic acid, which serves to direct them; 
but, as Huber remarks, though this may be of some use to them, their 
other senses must be equally employed, since it is evident, when they 
have made any discovery of agreeable food, that they possess the means 
of directing their companions to it, though it is scarcely possible that the 
path can have been sufficiently impregnated with the acid for them to 
trace their way to it by scent. Indeed the recruiting system, described 
above, proves that it requires some pains to instruct ants in the way from 
an old to a new nest; whereas, were they directed by scent, after a suffi- 
cient number had passed to and fro to imbue the path with the acid, there 
would be no occasion for further deportations.” 

Though ants have no mechanical inventions to diminish the quantum 
of labor, yet by numbers, strength, and perseverance they effect what at 
first sight seems quite beyond their powers. Their strength is wonderful. 
I once, as I formerly observed, saw two or three of them hauling along a 
young snake not dead, which was of the thickness of a goose-quill. St. 
Pierre relates, that he was highly amused with seeing a number of ants 
carrying off a Patagonian centipede. They had seized it by all its legs, 
and bore it along as workmen doa large piece of timber. The Mahome- 
tans hold, as Thevenot relates, that one of the animals m Paradise is 
Solomon’s ant, which, when all creatures in obedience to him brought 
him presents, dragged before him a locust, and was therefore preferred 
before all others, because it had brought a creature so much bigger than 
itself. ‘They sometimes, indeed, aim at things beyond their strength; but 
if they make their attack, they pertinaciously persist in it though at the 
expense of their lives. I have in my cabinet a specimen of Colliuris 
longicollis Latr., to one of the legs of which a small ant, scarcely a 
thirtieth part of its bulk, is fixed by its jaws. It had probably the auda- 
city to attack this giant, compared with itself, and obstinately refusing to 
let go its hold was starved to death.4 Professor Afzelius once related to 


1 Huber, 146. 2 (Luv de Bonnet, i. 535. Huber, 197. 3 Voy. to Maurit. 71. 

4 I was much amused, when dining in the forest of Fontainebleau, by the pertinacity 
with which the hill-ant (F. rufa) attacked our food, hauling from our very plates, while we 
were eating, long strips of meat many times their own size. 


380 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


me some particulars with respect to a species of ant in Sierra Leone, 
which proves the same point. He says that they fharch in columns that 
exceed all powers of numeration, and always pursue a straight course, 
from which nothing can cause them to deviate: if they come to a house 
or other building, they storm or undermine it; if a river comes across 
them, though millions perish in the attempt, they endeavor to swim 
over it. ‘ 

This quality of perseverance in ants on one occasion led to very 
important results, which affected a large portion of this habitable globe ; 
for the celebrated conqueror 'Timour, being once forced to take shelter 
from his enemies in a ruined building, where he sat alone many hours, 
desirous of diverting his mind from his hopeless condition, he fixed his 
observation upon an ant that was carrying a grain of corn (probably a 
pupa) larger than itself up a high wall. Numbering the efforts that it made 
to accomplish this object, he found that the grain fell sixty-nine times to 
the ground, but the seventieth time it reached the top of the wall. “This 
sight (said 'Timour) gave me courage at the moment; and I have never 
forgotten the lesson it conveyed.’”! 

Madame Merian, in her Surinam Insects, speaking of the large-headed 
ant (Atta cephalotes), affirms that, if they wish to emigrate, they will 
construct a living bridge in this manner :—One individual first fixes itself 
to a piece of wood by means of its jaws, and remains stationary ; with 
this a second connects itself; a third takes hold of the second, and a 
fourth of the third, and so on, till a long connected line is formed fastened 
at one extremity, which floats, exposed to the wind, till the other end is 
blown over so as to fix itself to the opposite side of the stream, when the 
rest of the colony pass over upon it, as a bridge.” This is the process, as 
far as I can collect it from her imperfect account. As she is not always 
very correct in her statements, I regarded this as altogether fabulous, till I 
met with the following history of a similar proceeding in De Azara, which 
induces me to give more credit to it. + 

He tells us, that in low districts in South America that are exposed to 
inundations, conical hills of earth may be observed, about three feet high, 
and very near to each other, which are inhabited by a little black ant. 
When an inundation takes place, they are heaped together out of the nest 
into arcircular mass, about a foot in diameter and four fingers in depth. 
Thus they remain floating upon the water while the inundation continues. 
One of the sides of the mass which they form is attached to some sprig 
of grass, or piece of wood ; and when the waters are retired, they return 
to their habitation. When they wish to pass from one plant to another, 
they may often be seen formed into a bridge, of two palms’ length, and 
of the breadth of a finger, which has no other support than that of its two 
extremities. One would suppose that their own weight would sink them ; 
but it is certain that the masses remain floating during the inundation, 
which lasts some days. 

You must now be fully satiated with this account of the constant 
fatigue and labor to which our little pismires are doomed by the law of 


' Related in the Quarterly Review for August, 1816, p. 259. 
? Insect. Surinam. p. 18. In her plate the ants are represented so connected. 
3 Voyages dans l’ Amérique Mérid. i. 187. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 881 


their nature ; I shall therefore endeavor to relieve your mind by introduc- 
ing you to a more quiet scene, and exhibit them to you during their inter- 
vals of repose and relaxation. 

Gould tells us that the hill-ant is very fond of basking in the sun, and 
that on a fine serene morning you may see them conglomerated like bees 
on the surface of their nest, from whence, on the least disturbance, they 
will disappear in an instant!’ M. Huber also observes, after their labors 
are finished, that they stretch themselves in the sun, where they lie heaped 
one upon another, and seem to enjoy a short interval of repose ; and in 
the interior of an artificial nest, in which he had confined some of this 
species, where he saw many employed in various ways, he noticed some. 
reposing which appeared to be asleep.” 

But they have not only their time for repose ; they also devote some 
to relaxation, during which they amuse themselves with sports and games. 
“You may frequently perceive one of these ants (I. rufa) (says our 
Gould) run to and fro with a fellow-laborer in his forceps, of the same 
species and colony. It appeared first in the light of provisions; but I 
was soon undeceived by observing that after being carried for some time it 
was let go in a friendly manner, and received no personal injury. This 
amusement, or whatever title you please to give it, is often repeated, 
particularly amongst the hill-ants, who are very fond of this sportive exer- 
cise.’> A nest of ants which Bonnet found in the head of a teazle, when 
enjoying the full sun, which seems the acmé of formic felicity, amused 
themselves with carrying each other on their backs, the rider holding with 
his mandibles the neck of his horse, and embracing it closely with his 
legs. But the most circumstantial account of their sports is given by 
Huber. ‘I approached one day,” says he, “one of their formicaries (he 
is speaking of EF. rufa) exposed to the sun and sheltered from the north. 
The ants were heaped together in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the 
temperature which they experienced at the surface of the nest. None of 
them were working: this multitude of accumulated insects exhibited the 
appearance of a boiling fluid, upon which at first the eye could scarce fix 
itself without difficulty. But when I set myself to follow each ant 
separately, I saw them approach each other, moving their antenne with 
astonishing rapidity ; with their fore-feet they patted lightly the cheeks of 
other ants: after these first gestures, which resembled caresses, they reared 
upon their hind-legs by pairs; they wrestled together; they seized one 
another by a mandible, by a leg or an antenna; they then let go their 
hold to renew the attack ; they fixed themselves to each other’s trunk or 
abdomen ; they embraced ; they turned each other over, or lifted each 
other up by turns—they soon quitted the ants they had seized, and 
endeavored to catch others. I have seen some who engaged in these 
exercises with such eagerness, as to pursue successively several workers ; 
and the combat did not terminate till the least animated, having thrown 
his antagonist, accomplished his escape by concealing himself in some 
gallery.”° He compares these sports to the gambols of two puppies, and 
tells us that he not only often observed them in this nest, but also in his 
artificial one. 

I shall here copy for you a memorandum I formerly made. ‘On the 


1 Gould, 69. 2 Huber, 73. * Gould, 103—. Bonnet, ii. 407. ® Huber, 170—. 


382 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


9th of May, at half past two, as I was walking on the Plumstead road 
near Norwich, on a sunny bank J observed a larg@ number of ants (For- 
mica fusca) agglomerated in crowds near the entrances of their nest. 
They seemed to make no long excursions, as if intent upon enjoying the 
sunshine at home ; but all the while they were coursing about, and appeared 
to accost each other with their antenna. Examining them very atten- 
tively, I at length saw one dragging another, which it absolutely lifted up 
by its antenne, and carrying it in the air. I followed it with my eye, till 
it concealed itself and its antagonist in the nést. I soon noticed another 
that had recourse to the same manceuvres; but in this instance the ant 
that was attacked resisted manfully, a third sometimes appearing inclined 
to interfere: the result was, that this also was dragged in. A third was 
hauled in by its legs, and a fourth by its mandibles. What was the precise 
object of these proceedings, whether sport or violence, I could not ascer- 
tain. I walked the same way on the following morning, but at an earlier 
hour, when only a few comers and goers were to be seen near the nest.” 
And soon leaving the place, I had no further opportunity to attend to 
them. 

And now having conducted you through every apartment of the for- 
micary, and shown you its inhabitants in every light, I shall leave you to 
meditate on the extraordinary instincts with which their Creator has gifted 
them, reserving what I have to say on the other social insects for a 


future occasion. 
I am, &e. 


383 


LEEPER AVI. 
SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. Wie 


PERFECT sOCIETIES—continued. (WASPS AND HUMBLE-BEES.) 


I sHavt now call your attention to such parts of the history of two other 
descriptions of social insects, wasps, namely, and humble-bees, as have 
not been related to you in my letters on the affection of insects for their 
young, and on their habitations. What I have to communicate, though 
not devoid of interest, is not to be compared with the preceding account 
of the ants, nor with that which will follow of the hive-bee. This, how- 
ever, may arise more from the deficiency of observations than the barren- 
ness of the subject. 

The first of these animals, wasps (Vespa)—with whose proceedings I 
shall begin—we are apt to regard in a very unfavorable light. ‘They are 
the most impertinent of intruders. If a door or window be open at the 
season of the year in which they appear, they are sure to enter. When 
they visit us, they stand upon no ceremony, but make free with every 
thing that they can come at. Sugar, meat, fruit, wine, are equally to their 
taste; and if we attempt to drive them away, and are not very cautious, 
they will often make us sensible that they are not to be provoked with 
impunity. Compared with the bees, they may be considered as a horde 
of thieves and brigands; and the latter as peaceful, honest, and industrious 
subjects, whose persons are attacked and property plundered by them. 
Yet, with all this love of pillage and other bad propensities, they are not 
altogether disagreeable or unamiable; they are brisk and lively ; they do. 
not usually attack unprovoked ; and their object in plundering us is not 
purely selfish, but is principally to provide for the support of the young 
brood of their colonies. 

The societies of wasps, like those of ants and other social Hymenoptera, 
consist of females, males, and workers. The females may be considered 
as of two sorts: first, the females by way of eminence, much larger than 
any other individuals of the community, equalling six of the workers (from 
which in other respects they do not materially differ) in weight, and laying 
both male and female eggs. Then the small females, not bigger than the 
workers, and laying only male eggs. This last description of females, 
which are found also both amongst the humble-bees and_hive-bees, 
were first observed amongst the wasps by M. Perrot, a friend of 
Huber’s.1 The large females are produced later than the workers, 
and make their appearance in the following spring; and whoever de- 
stroys one of them at that time destroys an entire colony, of which 
she would be the founder. They are more worthy of praise than 
the queen-bee; since upon the latter, from her very first appearance in 
the perfect state, no labor devolves—all her wants being prevented by a 


? Huber, Nouv. Observ. ii. 443. 


384 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


host of workers, some of which are constantly attending upon her, feeding 
her, and permitting her to suffer no fatigue ; while*ethers take every step 
that is necessary for the safety and subsistence of the colony. Not so our 
female wasp ;—she is at first an insulated being that has had the fortune 
to survive the rigors of winter. When in the spring she lays the founda- 
tion of her future empire, she has not a single worker at her disposal : 
with her own hands and teeth she often hollows out a cave wherein she 
may lay the first foundations of her paper metropolis; she must herself 
build the first houses, and produce from her own womb their first inhab- 
itants, which in their infant state she must feed and educate, before they 
can assist her in her great design. At length she receives the reward of 
her perseverance and labor ; and from being a solitary unconnected indi- 
vidual, in the autumn is enabled to rival the queen of the hive in the 
number of her children and subjects, and in the edifices which they 
inhabit—the number of cells in a vespiary sometimes amounting to more 
than 16,000, almost all of which contain either an egg, a grub, ora pupa, 
and each cell serving for three generations in a year; which, after making 
every allowance for failures and other casualties, will give a population of 
at least 30,000. Even at this time, when she has so numerous an army 
of coadjutors, the industry of this creature does not cease, but she con- 
tinues to set an example of diligence to the rest of the community. If 
by any accident, before the other females are hatched, the queen-mother 
perishes, the neuters cease their labors, lose their instincts, and die. 

The number of females in a populous vespiary is considerable, amount- 
ing to several hundred ; they emerge from the pupa about the latter end of 
August, at the same time with the males, and fly in September and Octo- 
ber, when they pair. Of this large number of females, very few survive 
the winter. ‘Those that are so fortunate remain torpid till the vernal sun 
recalls them to life and action. They then fly forth, collect provision for 
their young brood, and are engaged in the other labors necessary for laying 
the foundation of their empire: but in the summer months they are never 
seen out of the nest. 

The male wasps are much smaller than the female, but they weigh as 
much as two workers. Their antenne are longer than those of either, 
not, like theirs, thicker at the end, but perfectly filiform ; and their abdo- 
men is distinguished by an additional segment. Their numbers about 
equal those of the females, and they are produced at the same time. 
They are not so wholly given to pleasure and idleness as the drones of 
the hive. They do not, indeed, assist in building the nest, and in the care 
of the young brood ; but they are the scavengers of the community ; for 
they sweep the passages and streets, and carry off all the filth. They 
also remove the bodies of the dead, which are sometimes heavy burdens 
for them ; in which case two unite their strength to accomplish the work ; 
or, if a partner be not at hand, the wasp thus employed cuts off the head 
of the defunct, and so effects its purpose. As they make themselves so 
useful, they are not, like the male bees, devoted by the workers to an 
universal massacre when the impregnation of the females, the great end of 
their creation, is answered ; but they share the general lot of the commu- 
nity, and are suffered to survive till the cold cuts off them and the workers 
together. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 385 


The workers are the most numerous, and to us the only troublesome 
part of the community ; upon whom devolves the main business of the 
nest. In the summer and autumnal months, they go forth by myriads 
into the neighboring country to collect provisions; and on their return to 
the common den, after reserving a sufficiency for the nutriment of the 
young brood, they divide the spoil with great impartiality ;—part being 
given to the females, part to the males, and part to those workers that have 
been engaged in extending and fortifying the vespiary. This division is 
voluntarily made, without the slightest symptom of compulsion. Several 
wasps assemble round each of the returning workers, and receive their 
respective portions. It is curious and interesting to observe their motions 
upon this occasion. As soon as a wasp, that has been filling itself with 
the juice of fruits, arrives at the nest, it perches upon the top, and disgorg- 
ing a drop of its saccharine fluid, is attended sometimes by two at once, 
who share the treasure: this being thus distributed, a second and sometimes 
a third drop is produced, which falls to the lot of others. 

Wasps do not in general store up honey, but it is found in the cells of 
some European species of Polistes, as well as in those of America; and 
M. A. de St. Hilaire was nearly poisoned by eating that collected by P. 
lecheguana which inhabits Paraguay and Monte Video.! Another wasp 
before referred to under “habitations of insects,” as forming a nest some-. 
what similar to that of Chatergus nidulans, also stores up honey, as we 
learn from the interesting paper of Mr. Adam White, who has named it 
Myrapetra scutellaris.? 

Another principal employment of the workers is the enlarging and 
repairing of the nest. It is extremely amusing to see them engaged upon 
this foliaceous covering. They work with great celerity ; and though a 
large number are occupied at the same time, there is not the least confu- 
sion. Each individual has its portion of work assigned to it, extending 
from an inch to an inch anda half, and is furnished with a ball of ligneous 
fibre, scraped or rather plucked by its powerful jaws from posts, rails, and 
the like. This is carried in its mouth, and is thus ready for immediate 
use :—but upon this subject I have enlarged in a former letter. The 
workers also clean the cells and prepare them to receive another egg, after 
the imago is disclosed and has left. 

There is good reason for thinking, and the opinion has the sanction 
of Sir Joseph Banks, that wasps have sentinels placed at the entrances 
of their nests, which if you can once seize and destroy, the remainder 
will not attack you. ‘This is confirmed by an observation of Mr. Knight’s 
in the Philosophical Transactions*, that if a nest of wasps be approached 
without alarming the inhabitants, and all communication be suddenly cut 
off between those out of the nest and those within it, no provocation will 
induce the former to defend it and themselves. But if one escapes:from 
within, it comes with a very different temper, and appears commissioned 
to avenge public wrongs, and prepared to sacrifice its life in the execution 
of its orders, He discovered this when quite a boy. 

It sometimes happens that when a large number of female wasps have 
been observed in the spring, and an abundance of workers has in conse- 


1 Lacordaire, Introd. a ?’ Entom. ii. 511. 2 Annals of Nat. Hist. vii. 316. 
3 For 1807, 242—. 
33 


386 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


quence been expected to make their attack upon us in the summer and 
autumn, but few have appeared. Mr. Knight observed this in 1806, and 
supposes it to be caused by a failure of males.‘ I have since more than 
once made the same observation, and Major Moor, as well as myself, 
noticed it in the year 1815. What took place here in the following year 
may in some degree account for it. ‘Though the summer had been very 
wet, and one may almost say winterly, there were in the neighborhood in 
which I reside abundance of wasps at the usual time: but except on 
some few warm days, in which they were very active, benumbed by the 
cold they were crawling about on the floors of my house, and seemed 
_ unable to fy. In this vicinity numbers make their nests in the banks of 
the river. In the beginning of the month of October there was a 
very considerable inundation, after which not a single wasp was to be 
seen. ‘The continued wet that produces an inundation may also destroy 
those nests that are out of the reach of the waters ; and perhaps this cause 
may have operated in those years above alluded to, in which the appear- 
ance of the workers in the summer and autumn did not correspond with the 
large numbers of females observed in the spring. 

In ordinary seasons, in the month lately mentioned, October, wasps 
seem to become less savage and sanguinary; for even flies, of which 
earlier in the summer they are the pitiless destroyers, may be seen to 
enter their nests with impunity. It is then, probably, that they begin 
to be first affected by the approach of the cold season, when nature teaches 
them it is useless longer to attend to their young. ‘They themselves all 
perish, except a few of the females, upon the first attack of frost. 

Reaumur, from whom (see the sixth Memoir of his last volume) most 
of these observations are taken, put the nests of wasps under glass hives, 
and succeeded so effectually in reconciling these little restless creatures 
to them that they carried on their various works under his eye; and if 
you feel disposed to follow his example, I have no doubt you will 
throw light upon many parts of their history, concerning which we are 


now in darkness. 


- Having given you some idea, imperfect indeed from the want of mate- 
rials, of the societies of wasps, I must next draw up for you the best 
account I can of those of the humble-bees.2. These form a kind of inter- 
mediate link between the wasps and the _hive-bees, collecting honey 
indeed and making wax, but constructing their combs and cells without 
the geometric precision of the latter, and of a more rude and rustic kind 
of architecture ; and distinguished from both, though they approach nearer 
to the bees, by the extreme hairiness of their bodies. 

The population of a humble-bees’ nest may be divided into four orders 
of individuals : the large females; the small females; the males; and 
the workers. 

The large females, like the female wasps, are the original founders of 
their republics. They are often so large, that by the side of the small 
ones or the workers, which in every other respect they exactly resemble, 
they look like giants opposed to pigmies. They are excluded from the 
pupa in the autumn ; and pair in that season, with males produced from the 


1 Philosophical Transactions for 1807, 243. 2 Bombus, Apis **. e. 2. K. 
p P 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 8387 


eggs of the small females. They pass the winter under ground, and, as 
appears from an observation of M. P. Huber, in a particular apartment, 
separate from the rest, and rendered warm by acarpeting of moss and 
grass, but without any supply of food. Early in the spring (for they make 
their first appearance as soon as the catkins of the sallows and willows are 
in flower), like the female wasps, they lay the foundations of a new colony 
without the assistance of any neuters, which all perish before the winter. 
In some instances, however, if a conjecture of M. de Ja Billardiére be 
correct, these creatures have an assistant assigned to them. He says, at 
this season (the approach of winter) he found in the nest of Bombus Syl- 
varum some old females and workers, whose wings were fastened together 
to retain them in the nest by hindering them from flying ; these wings in 
each individual were fastened together at the extremity, by means of some 
very brown wax applied above and below.!. This he conceives to be a 
precaution taken by the other bees to oblige these individuals to remain in 
the nest, and take care of the brood that was next year to renew the 
population of the colony. I feel, however, great hesitation in admitting 
this conjecture, founded upon an insulated and perhaps an accidental fact. 
For, in the first place, the young females that come forth in the autumn, 
and not the old ones, are the founders of new colonies, and their instinct 
directs them to fulfil the great laws of their nature without such compul- 
sion ; and in the next, the workers are never known to survive the cold of 
winter. 

The employment of a large female, besides the care of the young brood 
before described, and the collecting of honey and pollen, is principally the 
constructing of the cells in which her eggs are to be laid; which M. P. 
Huber seems to think, though they often assist in it, the workers are not 
able to complete by themselves. So rapid is the female in this work, 
that to make a cell, fill it with pollen, commit one or two eggs to it, and 
cover them in, requires only the short space’of half an hour. Her family 
at first consists only of workers, which are necessary to assist her in her 
labors ; these appear in May and June; but the males and females are 
later, and sometimes are not produced before August and September.? As 
in the case of the hive-bee, the food of these several individuals differs ; 
for the grubs that will turn to workers are fed with honey and pollen 
mixed, while those that are destined to be males and females are supplied 
with pure honey. 

The instinct of these larger females does not develop itself all at once:: 
for it is a remarkable fact, that when they are first hatched in the autumn, 
not being in a condition to become mothers, they are no object of jealousy 
to the small queens (as we shall soon see they are when engaged in ovi- 
position), and are employed in the ordinary labors of the parent nest— 
that is, they collect honey and pollen, and make wax; but they do not 
construct cells. The building instinct seems as it were in suspense, and 
does not manifest itself till the spring ; when the maternal sentiment impels 

1 Mémoires du Muséum, &ce. i. 55. aR ead 

® P. Huber, in Linn. Trans. vi. 264.—This author says, however, in another place (ibid. 
285.), that the male eggs are laid in the spring, at the same time with those that are to 


produce workers. Perhaps by the former he means the male offspring of the small females, 
and by the latter those of the large ? 


388 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


them at the same time to lay eggs, and to construct the cells in which they 
are to be deposited. : . 

I have told you above, that amongst the wasps a small kind of female 
has been discovered: this is the case also amongst the humble-bees, in 
whose societies they are more readily detected; not, indeed, by any 
observable difference between them and the workers, but chiefly by the 
diversity of their instincts :—from the other females they are distinguished 
solely by their diminutive size. Like those of the wasps and hive-bees, 
these minor queens produce only male eggs, which come out in time to 
fertilize the young females that found the vernal colonies. M. P. Huber 
suspects that, as in the case of the female bee, it isa different kind of 
food that develops their ovaries, and so distinguishes them from the 
workers. They are generally attended by a small number of males, who 
form their court. 

M. Huber, watching at midnight the proceedings of a nest which he 
kept under a glass, observed the inhabitants to be in a state of great agi- 
tation; many of these bees were engaged in making a-cell; the queen- 
mother of the colony, as she may be called, who is always extremely 
jealous of her pigmy rivals, came and drove them away from the cell ;— 
she in her turn was driven away by the others, which pursued her, beating 
their wings with the utmost fury, to the bottom of the nest. The cell 
was then constructed, and two of them at the same time oviposited in it. 
The queen returned to the charge, exhibiting similar signs of anger; and, 
chasing them away again, put her head into the cell, when, seizing the 
eges that had been laid, she was observed to devour them with great 
avidity. The same scene was again renewed, with the same issue, After 
this, one of the small females returned and covered the empty cells with 
wax. When the mother-queen was removed, several of the small females 
contended for the cell with indescribable rage, all endeavoring to lay their 
_ eggs in it at the same time. ‘T’bese small females perish in the autumn, 

The males are usually smaller than the large females, and larger than 
the small ones and workers. ‘They may be known by their longer, more 
filiform, and slenderer antenne ; by the different shape and by the beard 
of their mandibles. Their posterior tibie also want the corbicula and 
pecten that distinguish the individuals of the other sex, and their posterior 
plante have no auricle. We learn from Reaumur that the male humble- 
bees are not an idle race, but work in concert with the rest to repair any 
damage or derangement that may befal the common habitation.! 

The workers, which are the first fruits of the queen-mother’s vernal 
parturition, assist her, as soon as they are excluded from the pupa, in her 
various labors. ‘To them also is committed the construction of the waxen 
vault that covers and defends the nest. When any individual larva has 


1 It should be here observed that, besides the proper occupants of some humble-bees’ 
nests, thére are occasionally met with in them individuals of another genus of the same 
family, so closely resembling them as to be often confounded with them, which, being un- 
provided with the usual polliniferous organs, are supposed to be, in their larva state, parasitic 
inhabitants of the nest. This genus, which includes Apis rupestris F, &c., has been named 
Apathus by Mr. Newman, Psithyrus by M. de St. Fargeau, and Pseudo-Bomtus by Mr. Ste- 
phens. In like manner, the exotic genus Chrysantheda is supposed to be parasitic on the 
metallic Euglosse (Hist.of Ins. by Swainson and Shuckard, 169. Westwood’s Mod. Class. 
of Ins., ii. 281.) ; 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 389 


Spun its cocoon and assumed the pupa, the workers remove all the wax 
from it; and as soon as it has attained to its perfect state, which takes 
place in about five days, the cocoons are used to hold honey or pollen. 
When the bees discharge the honey into them upon their return from their 
excursions, they open their mouths and contract their bodies, which occa- 
sions the honey to fall into the reservoir. Sixty of these honey-pots are 
occasionally found in a single nest, and more than forty are sometinies 
' filled in a day. In collecting honey, humble-bees, if they cannot get at 
that contained in, any flower by its natural opening, will often make an 
aperture at the base of the corolla, or even in the calyx, that they may 
insert their proboscis in the very place where nature has stored up her 
nectar.' M. Huber relates a singular anecdote of some hive-bees paying 
a visit to a nest of humble-bees placed under a box not far from their hive, 


1 Hub. Nouv. Observ. ii. 375. Of the especial love of humble-bees for the nectar of the 
Passion-flower (Passiflora czrulea), and the effect which it has on them, the following para- 
graph gives a graphic description. 

“ We regret exceedingly to announce that some honest humble-bees of our acquaintance 
have taken to drinking, and to such excess that they are daily found reeling and tumbling 
about the door of their houses of call—the blossoms of the Passion-flower, which flow over 
with intoxicating beverage; and there, not content with drinking like decent bees, they 
plunge their great hairy heads into the beautiful goblet that nature has formed in such 
plants, thrusting each other aside, or climbing over each other’s shoulders, till the flowers 
bend beneath their weight. After a time they become so stupid that it is in vain to pull 
them by the skirts, and advise them to go home, instead of wasting their time in tippling : 
they are, however, good-natured in their cups, and show no resentment at being disturbed ; 
on the contrary, they cling to their wine goblet, and crawl back to it as fast as they are 
pulled away, unless, indeed, they fairly lose their legs and tumble down, in which case they 
lie sprawling on the ground, quite unable to get up again.” (Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, p. 
519.) If this account be not over-colored these jovial, reckless proceedings of humble-bees 
are in strong contrast with the temperate habits of hive-bees, which, to judge from the 
interesting account Mr. Wuiles has given us of their visits to his Passion-flowers (Ent. 
Mag. i. 525.), hurried back to the hive as soon as they had imbibed their supply of nectar ; 
and certainly the anecdote given below, from Huber, of the way in whieh humble-bees suf- 
fered themselves to be cajoled out of their honey by hive-bees indicates such a good-natured 
weakness of disposition as may easily be supposed to be combined with a propensity to 
carousing when the opportunity presents itself. To speak seriously, however, it would be 
well worth ascertaining, by exact observations, whether as great a contrast between the 
temperance of humble-bees and hive-bees in feeding really exists, as between their easiness 
of temper. There can be no doubt that some races of insects vary as much in this last 
respect as some races of men. The difference as to irritability between the temper of wasps 
and that of bees is known to every one, but has never been so happily hit off as by Chris- 
topher North, whose universal genius adorns every subject, in the description of it, which 
he has put into the mouth of the “‘ Shepherd,” in one of the Noctes, and which well deserves 
transcription here from the pages of the voluminous periodical in which it has lain entombed 
these sixteen years. 

“¢ Shepherd —O’ a’ God’s creturs the wasp is the only ane that’s eternally out o’ temper. 
There’s nae sic thing as pleasin’ him. Inthe gracious sunshine, . . . . when the bees are 
at work murmurin’ in their gauzy flight, although no gauze indeed be comparable to the 
filaments o’ their woven wings, or, clinging silently to the flowers, sook, sookin’ out the 
hiney-dew, till their verra doups dirl wi’ delight,—when a’ the flees that are ephemeral, 
and weel contented wi’ the licht and the heat o’ ae single sun, keep dancin’ in their burnished 
beauty, up and down, to and fro, and backwards and forwards, and sideways, in millions 
upon millions, and yet are never joistling anither, but a’ harmoniously blended together in 
amity, like imagination’s thochts,—why, amid this ‘ general dance of minstrelsy,’ in comes a 
shower o’ infuriated wasps, red het, as if let out o’ a fiery furnace, pickin’ quarrels wi’ their 
ain shadows—then roun and roun the hair o’ your head, bizzin’ against the drum o’ your ear 
till you think they are in at the ae hole and out at the ither—back again after makin’ a circuit, 
as if they had repentit o’ lettin’ you be unharmed, dashin’ against the face o’ you who are 
wishin’ ill to nae livin’ thing, and although you are engaged out to dinner, stickin’ a lang poi- 
shoned stang in just below your ee, that afore you can rin hame frae the garden swell up toa 
fearsome hicht, makin’ you on that side look like a blackamoor, and on the opposite white 
as death, sae intolerable is the agony frae the tail o the yellow imp that, according to his 
bulk, is stronger far than the dragon o’ the desert.” (Blackwood’s Edinburgh Mag. Oct. 1826.) 


33* 


390 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


in order to steal or beg their honey, which places in a strong light the 
good temper of the latter. This happened in a tire of scarcity. The 
hive-bees, after pillaging, had taken almost entire possession of the nest. 
Some humble-bees, which remained in spite of this disaster, went out to 
collect provisions ; and bringing home the surplus after they had supplied 
their own immediate wants, the hive-bees followed them, and did not quit 
them until they had obtained the fruit of their labors. ‘They licked them, 
presented to them their proboscis, surrounded them, and thus at last per- - 
suaded them to part with the contents of their honey-bags. ‘The humble- 
bees after this flew away to collect a fresh supply. ‘The hive-bees did 
them no harm, and never once showed their stings ;—so that it seems to 
have been persuasion rather than force that produced this singular instance 
of self-denial. This remarkable manceuvre was practiced for more than 
three weeks; when the wasps being attracted by the same cause, the 
humble-bees entirely forsook the nest.! 

The workers are the most numerous part of the community, but are 
nothing when compared with the numbers to be found in a vespiary or a 
bee-hive: two or three hundred is a large population for a humble-bees’ 
nest; in some species it not being more than fifty or sixty. They may 
more easily be studied than either wasps or hive-bees, as they seem not to 
be disturbed or interrupted in their works by the eye of an observer.? 


Iam, &c. 


1 Hub. Nouv. Observ. ii. 373. 
_2 This account of the proceedings of humble-bees is chiefly taken from Reaumur, vi. 


Mém. 1.; and M. P. Huber in Linn. Trans. vi. 214. 


391 


LETTER XIX. 
SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
PERFECT SOCIETIES—continued. (THE HIVE-BEE. ) 


Tue glory of an all-wise and omnipotent Creator, you will acknowledge, 
is wonderfully manifested by the varied proceedings of those social tribes 
_of which I have lately treated; but it shines forth with a brightness still 
more intense in the instincts that actuate the common hive-bee (Apis 
mellifica)', and which I am next to lay before you. Of all the insect 
associations, there are none that have more excited the attention and 
admiration of mankind in-every age, or been more universally interesting; 
than the colonies of these little useful creatures. Both Greek and Roman 
writers are loud in their praise; nay, some philosophers were so enamored 
of them, that, as I observed before, they devoted a large portion of their 
time to the study of their history. Whether the knowledge they acquired 
was at all equivalent to the years that were spent in the attainment of it 
may be doubted; for, were it so, it is probable that Aristotle and Pliny 
would have given a clearer and more consistent account of the inhabitants 
of the hive than they have done. Indeed, had their discoveries borne any 
proportion to the long tract of time asserted to have been employed by 
some in the study of these insects, they ought to have rivalled, and even 
exceeded, those of the ‘Reaumurs and Hubers of our own age. 

Numerous, and wonderful for their absurdity, were the errors and fables 
which many of the ancients adopted and circulated with respect to the 
generation and propagation of these busy insects. For instance,—that 
they were sometimes produced from the putrid bodies of oxen and lions ; 
the kings and leaders from the brain, and the vulgar herd from the flesh ; 
—a fable, derived probably from swarms of bees having been observed, 
as in the case of Samson”, to take possession of the dried carcasses of 
these animals, or, perhaps, from the myriads of flies (for the vulgar do not 
readily distinguish flies from bees) often generated in their putrescent 
flesh. They “adopted . another notion equally absurd,—that these insects 
collect their young progeny from the blossoms and foliage of certain plants. 
Amongst others, the Cerinthus, the reed, and the olive-tree had this virtue 
of generating infant bees attributed to them. These specimens of ancient 
eredulity will suffice. 

But do not think that all the ancients imbibed such monstrous opinions. 
Aristotle’s sentiments seem to have been much more correct, and not very 
wide of what some of our best modern apiarists have advanced. Accord- 
ing to him, the kings (so he denominates the queen-bee) generate both 
kings and workers; and the latter the drones. ‘This he seems to have 


1 Apis ** eI, K. 2 Judges, xiv. 8, 9. 
3 See Aristot. Hist. Animal. |. v. c. 22.; Virgil, Georgic. 1. iv. ; and Mouffet, 12. 


392 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


learned from keepers of bees. The kings, says he, in another place, are 
the parents of the bees, and the drones their children. It is right, he 
observes again, that the kings (which by some were called mothers) should 
remain within the hive unfettered by any employment, because they are 
made for the multiplication of the species. To the same purpose Riem 
of Lauten of the Palatinate Apiarian Society, and Wilhelmi of the 
Lusatian, affirm that the queen lays the eggs which produce the queens 
and workers; and the workers those that produce the drones or males.” 
Aristotle also tells us that some in his time affirmed that the bees (the 
workers) were the females, and the drones the males: an opinion which 
he combats from an analogy pushed rather too far, that nature would 
never give offensive armor to females.? In another place he appears to 
think that the workers are hermaphrodites :—his words remarkable, and 
seem to indicate that he was aware of the sexes of plants; ‘‘ having in 
themselves,’”’ says he, ‘like plants, the male and the female.’’* 

Fables and absurdities, however, are not confined to the ancients, nor 
even to those moderns who lived before Swammerdam, Maraldi, Reaumur, 
Bonnet, Schirach, John Hunter, Huber, and their followers, by their 
observations and discoveries had thrown so much light upon this interesting 
subject. Even in our own times, a Neapolitan professor, Monticelli, 
asserts, on the authority of a certain father Tanoya, that in every hive 
there are three sorts of bees independent of each other; viz..male and 
female drones—male and female, I must not say queens—call them what 
you will—and male and female workers; and that each construct their 
own cells!!! Enough, however, upon this subject. I shall now endeavor 
to lay before you the best authenticated facts in the history of these 
animals ; but you must not expect an account of them complete in all its 
parts; for, much as we know, Bonnet’s observation will still hold good: 
“The more Iam engaged in making fresh observations upon bees, the more 
steadfast is my conviction that the time is not yet arrived in which we can 
draw satisfactory conclusions with respect to their policy. It is only by 
varying and combining experiments in a thousand ways, and by placing 
these industrious flies in circumstances more or less removed from their 
ordinary state, that we can hope to ascertain the right direction of their 
instinct, and the true principles of their government.’ 

What I have further to say concerning these admirable creatures will 
be principally taken from the two authors who have given the clearest 
and most satisfactory account of them, Reaumur and the elder Huber; 
though I shall add from other sources such additional observations as may 
serve better to elucidate their history. 

The society of a hive of bees, besides the young brood, consists of one 
female or queen ; several hundreds of males or drones ; and many thousand 
workers. 

The female, or queen, first demands our attention. Two sorts of 
females have been observed amongst the bees, a large one and a small. 
Mr. Needham was the first that observed the latter; and their existence, 
M. P. Huber tells us, has been confirmed by several observations of his 


1 Aristot. ubi supr.c. 21. De Generat. Animal. 1. iii. c. 10., where there is some curious 
reasoning upon this subject. ; 
2 Bonnet, x. 199. 236. 3 Hist. Animal. 1, v. c. 22. 


4 De Generat, Animal. |. iii. c. 10. 5 CEuvr. x. 194. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 393 


father. They are bred in cells as large as those of the common queens, 
from which they differ only in size. Though they have ovaries, the 
have never been observed to lay eggs. Having never seen one of these, 
for they are of very rare occurrence, my description must be confined to 
the common female, the genuine monarch of the hive.? 


1 Bonnet, x. P. Huber in Linn. Trans. vi, 283. Reaumur (v. 373.) observes that some 
queens are much larger than others; but he attributes this difference of their size to the 
state of the eggs in their body. 

2 As every reader is not aware of the differences of form, &c., that distinguish the 
females, males, and workers from each other (I have seen the male mistaken for a distinct 
species, and placed in a cabinet as Apis lagopoda L.), I shall here subjoin a description of 
each. 

i. The body of the Female bee is considerably longer than that of either the drone or the 
worker. The prevailing color in all three is the same, black or black-brown ; but with res- 
pect to the female this does not appear to be invariably the case: for—not to insist upon 
Virgil’s royal bees glittering with ruddy or golden spots and scales, where allowance must 
be made for poetic licence—Reaumur affirms, after describing some differences of color 
in different individuals of this: sex, that a queen may always be distinguished, both from 
the workers and males, by the color of her body.* If this observation be restricted to the 
celor of some parts of her body, it is correct ; but it will not apply to all generally (unless, 
as I suspect may be the case, by the term body he means the abdomen), for, in all that I 
have had an opporiunity of examining, the prevailing color, as I have stated it, is the same. 

The head is not larger than that of the workers; but the zongwe is shorter and more slen- 
der, with straighter mazill@. The mandibles are forficate, and do not jut out like theirs into 
a prominent angle; they are of the color of pitch with a red tinge, and terminate in two ° 
teeth, the exterior being acute, and the interior blunt or truncated. The /abrum or upper 
lip is falvous ; and the antenne@ are piceous. 

In the trunk, the tegule or scales that defend the base of the wings are rufopiceous. The 
mings reach only to the tip of the third abdominal segment. The tarsi and the apex of the 
tibie are rufo-fulvous. The posterior tidi@ are plane above, and covered with short adpressed 
hairs, having neither the cordicula (or marginal fringe of hairs for carrying the masses of 
pollen) nor the pecten ; and the posterior plante have neither the brush formed of hairs set 
in striez, nor the auricle at the base. 

The abdomen is considerably longer than the head and trunk taken together, receding from 
the trunk, elongato-conical, and rather sharp at the anus. The dorsal segments are fulvous 
at the tip; covered with very short, pallid, and, in certain lights, shining adpressed hairs ; 
the first segment being very short. and covered with longer hairs. The ventral segments, 
except the anal, which is black, are falvescent or rufo-fulvous, and covered with soft longer 
hairs. The vagina of the spicula (commonly called the sting) is curved. 

li. The Male bee, or drone, is quite the reverse of his royal paramour; his body being 
thick, short, and clumsy, and very obtuse at each extremity.f It is covered also, as to the 
head and trunk, with dense hairs. 

The head is depressed and orbicular. The tongue is shorter and more slender than that 
of the female; and the mandibles, though nearly of the same shape, are smaller. The eyes 
are very large, meeting at the back part of the head. In the space between them are placed 
the antenne and stemmata. The former consist of fourteen joints, including the radicle, the 
fourth and fifth being very short, and not easily distinguished. 

The truak is large. The wings are longer than the body. The /egs are short and slender. 
The posterior tibia are long, club-shaped, and covered with inconspicuous hairs. The pos- 
terior plante are furnished underneath with thick-set scopul@, which they use to brush their 
bodies. 

The claw joints are fulvescent. 

The abdomen is cordate, very short, being scarcely so long as the head and trunk together, 
consisting of seven segments, which are fulvous at their apex. The first segment is longer 
than any of the succeeding ones, and covered above with rather long hairs. The second 
and third dorsal segments are apparently naked; but under a triple lens, in a certain light, 
some adpressed hairs may be perceived ;—the remaining ones are hairy, the three last being 
inflexed. The ventral segments are very narrow, hairy, and fulvous. 

iii. The body of the Workers is oblong. 


* Reaumnr, v. 375. 


+ Virgil seems to have regarded the drone as one of the sorts of kings or leaders of the 
bees, when he says, speaking of the latter, 


“........ Ile horridus alter 
Desidia, latamque trahens inglorius alvum.” 
Georgic. iv. 1. 93. 


394 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


There are two descriptions of males—one not bigger than the workers, 
supposed to be produced from a male egg laid in a@worker’s cell. The 
common males are much larger, and will counterpoise two workers. 

I have before observed to you that there are two sorts of workers, the 
wax-makers and nurses.!. They may also be further divided into fertile 
and sterile?: for some of them; which in their infancy are supposed to 
have partaken of some portion of the royal jelly, lay male eggs. There 
is found in some hives, according to Huber, a kind of bees, which, from 
having less down upon the head and thorax, appear blacker than the 
others, by whom they are always expelled from the hive, and often killed. 
Perfect ovaries, upon dissection, were discovered in these bees, though 
not furnished with eggs. This discovery induced M"* Jurine, the lady 
who dissected them, to examine the common workers in the same way ; 
and she found in all that she examined, what had escaped Swammerdam, 
perfect though sterile ovaries.? It is worth inquiry, though M. Huber 
gives no hint of this kind, whether these were not in fact superannuated 
bees, that could no longer take part in the labors of the hive. Thorley 
remarks, which confirms this idea, that if you closely observe a hive of 
bees in July, you may perceive many amongst them of a dark color, with 
wings rent and torn; but that in September not one of them is to be seen.‘ 
Huber does not say whether the wings of the bees in question were 
lacerated; but in superannuated insects the hair is often rubbed off the 
body, which gives them a darker hue than that of more recent individuals 
of the same species. Should this conjecture turn out true, their banish- 
ment and destruction of the seniors of the hive would certainly not show 
our little creatures in a very amiable point of view. Yet it seems the 
law of their nature to rid their community of all supernumerary and 
useless members, as is evident from their destruction of the drones after 
their work is done. 

It is not often that insects have been weighed ; but Reaumur’s curiosity 
was excited to know the weight of bees; and he found that 336 weighed 
an ounce, and 5376 a pound. According to John Hunter, an ale-house 
pint contains 2160 workers. 


The head triangular. The mandibles are prominent, so as to terminate the head in an 
angle, toothless, and forcipate. The tongue and mazille are long and incurved; the labrum 
and antenna black. 

In the trunk the tegule are black. The wings extend only to the apex of the fourth seg- 
ment of the abdomen. The /egs are all black, with the digits only rather piceous. The | 
posterior tisie are naked above, exteriorly longitudinally concave, and interiorly-longitu- 
dinally convex ; furnished with lateral and recumbent hairs to form the cordicula, and armed 
at the end with the pecten. The upper surface of the posterior plante resembles that of the 
tibie ; underneath they are furnished with a scopula or brush of stiff hairs set in rows: at 
the base they are armed with stiff bristles, and exteriorly with an acute appendage or auricle. 

The abdomenis a little longer than the head and trunk together; oblong, and rather heart- 
shaped; a transverse section of it is triangular. It is covered with longish, flavo-pallid 
hairs: the first segment is short with longer hairs; the base of the three intermediate seg- 
ments is covered, and as it were banded, with pale hairs. The apex of the three interme- 
diate ventral segments is rather fulvescent, and their base is distinguished on each side by 
a trapeziform wax pocket covered by a thin membrane. The sting, or rather vagina of the 
spicula, is straight. 

1 See p. 311. 

2 In hives where a queen laying male eggs has been killed, the workers continue to make 
only male cells, though supplied with a fertile queen, and the fertile workers lay eggs in 
them. Schirach, 258. 

3 Huber, ii, 425. * Thorley On Bees, 179. 


: PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 395 


Ihave described to you the persons of the different individuals that 
compose the society of the bee-hive more in detail than I should otherwise - 
have done, in order that you may be the better able to form a judgment 
upon a most extraordinary circumstance in their history, which is supported 
by evidence that seems almost incontrovertible. The fact to which I 
allude is this—that if the bees are deprived of their queen, and are sup- 
plied with comb containing young worker brood only, they will select ome 
or more to be educated as queens; which, by having a royal cell erected 
for their habitation, and being fed with royal jelly for not more than two 
days, when they emerge from the pupa state (though, if they had remain- 
ed in the cells which they originally inhabited, they would have turned 
out workers) will come forth complete queens, with their form, instincts, 
and powers of generation entirely different. In order to produce this effect, 
the grub must not be more than three days old ; and this is the age at 
which, according to Schirach (the first apiarist who called the public 
attention to this miracle of nature), the bees usually elect the larve to be 
royally educated; though it appears from Huber’s observations, that a 
larva two days or even twenty-four hours old will do.!. Having chosen a 
grub, they remove the inhabitants and their food from two of the cells 
which join that in which it resides; they next take down the partitions 
which separate these three cells; and, leaving the bottoms untouched, 
raise round the selected worm a cylindrical tube, which follows the hori- 
zontal direction of the other cells: but since at the close of the third day 
of its life its habitation must assume a different form and direction, they 
gnaw away the cells below it, and sacrifice without pity the grubs they 
contain, using the wax of which they were formed to construct a new 
pyramidal tube, which they join at right angles to the horizontal one, the 
diameter of the former diminishing insensibly from its base to its mouth. 
During the two days which the grub inhabits this cell, like the common 
royal cells now become vertical”, a bee may always be observed with its 
head plunged into it; and when one quits it another takes its place. 
These bees keep lengthening the cell as the worm grows older, and duly 
supply it with food, which they place before its mouth, and round its body. 
The animal, which can only move in a spiral direction, keeps incessantly 
turning to take the jelly deposited before it; and thus slowly working 
downwards, arrives insensibly near the orifice of the cell, just at the time 
that it is ready to assume the pupa; when, as before described, the work- 
ers shut up its cradle with an appropriate covering.® 

When you have read this account, I fear, with the celebrated John 
Hunter, you will not be very ready to believe it; at least you will call 
upon me to bring forth my “strong reasons” in support of it. What !— 
you will exclaim—can a larger and warmer house (for the royal cells are 
affirmed to enjoy a higher temperature than those of the other bees*), a 
different and more pungent kind of food, and a vertical instead of a 
horizontal posture, in the first place, give a bee a differently shaped tongue 
and mandibles ; render the surface of its posterior tibie flat instead of 
concave ; deprive them of the fringe of hairs that forms the basket for 


1 Huber, i. 137. 


* Reaumur, who was, however, unacquainted with this extraordinary fact, has figured 
one of these cells, v. ¢. 32. f. 3. h. 
3 Compare Bonnet, x. 156. with Huber, 1. 134. 4 Schirach, 69. 


396. PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


carrying the masses of pollen; of the auricle and pecten which enable 
the workers to use these tibie as pincers!; of the*brush that lines the 
inside of their plante? Can they lengthen its abdomen ; alter its color 
and clothing; give a curve to its sting ; deprive it of its wax-pockets, and 
of the vessels for secreting that substance; and render its ovaries more 
conspicuous, and capable of yielding female as well as male eggs? Can, 
in the next place, the seemingly trivial circumstances just enumerated 
altogether alter the instinct of these creatures? Can they give to one 
description of animals address and industry ; and to the other astonishing 
fecundity? Can we conceive them to change the very passions, tempers, 
and manners? ‘That the very same foetus if feed with more pungent food, 
in a higher temperature and in a vertical position, shall become a female 
destined to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger, to be incited to 
vengeance, and to pass her time without labor—that this very same feetus, 
if feed with more simple food, in a lower temperature, in a more confined 
and horizontal habitation, shall come forth a worker zealous for the good 
of the community, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an immunity 
from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of parturition—laborious, 
industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful—incessantly engaged in the nurture 
of the young; in collecting honey and pollen; in elaborating wax; in 
constructing cells, and the like !—paying the most respectful and assiduous 
attention to objects which, had its ovaries been developed, it would have 
hated, and pursued with the most vindictive fury till it had destroyed 
them! Further, that these factitious queens (I mean those that the bees 
elect from amongst worker brood, and educate to supply the place of a 
lost one in the manner just described) shall differ remarkably from the 
natural queens (or those that have been wholly educated in a royal cell), 
in being altogether mute.? All this, you will think at first sight so improba- 
ble, and next to impossible, that you will require the strongest and most 
irrefragable evidence before you will believe it. 

In spite of all these powerful probabilities to the contrary, this aston- 
ishing and seemingly incredible fact rests upon strong foundations, and is 
established by experiments made at different times, by different persons 
of the highest credit, in different parts of Europe. The first who brought 
it before the public (as I lately observed) was M. Schirach, secretary of 
an Apiarian Society established at Little Bautzen in Upper Lusatia. He 
observed that bees, when shut up with a portion of comb containing only 
worker brood, would soon erect royal cells, and thus obtain queens :—the 
experiment was frequently repeated, and the result was almost uniformly the 
same. In one instance he tried it with a single cell, and it succeeded.® 
This curious fact was communicated to the celebrated Bonnet, who, 
though he hesitated long before he admitted it, was at length fully con- 
vinced. M. Wilhelmi (Schirach’s brother-in-law), though at first he 
accounted for the fact upon other principles, and objected strongly to the 
doctrine in question, induced by the powerful evidence in favor of it, at 
Jast gave up his former opinion, and embraced it. And, to mention no 
more, the great Aristomachus of modern times, M. Huber, by experi- 
ments repeated for ten years, was fully convinced of the truth of Schi- 
rach’s position.4 


? Huber, t. 4. f. 4—6. * Huber, i. 292. 3 Bonnét, x. 4 Huber, i. 132. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 397 


The fact in question, though the public attention was first called to it 
by the latter gentleman, had indeed been practically known long before 
he wrote. M. Vogel, in a letter to Wilhelmi, asserts that numerous 
experiments confirming this extraordinary fact had been made by more 
than a hundred different persons, in the course of more than a hundred 
years ; and that he himself had known old cultivators of bees who had 
unanimously declared to him, that, when proper precautions were taken, 
in a practice of more than fifty years, the experiment had never failed. 
Signor Monticelli, the Neapolitan professor before mentioned, informs us 
that the Greeks and Turks of the Ionian Islands know how to make arti- 
ficial swarms; and that the art of producing queens at will has been 
practiced by the inhabitants of a little Sicilian island called Favignana, 
from very remote antiquity ; and he even brings arguments to prove that 
it was no secret to the Greeks and Romans”, though, had the practice 
been common, it would surely have been noticed by Aristotle and Pliny. 

Bonner, a British apiarist, asserts that he has had successful recourse to 
the Lusatian experiment’; and Mr. Payne of Shipdam in Norfolk (who 
for many years has been engaged in the culture of bees, and has paid 
particular attention to their proceedings) relates that he well remembers 
that the bees of one of his hives, which he discovered had lost their 
queen, were engaged in erecting some royal cells upon the ruins of some 
of the common ones. He also informs me that he has found Huber’s 
statements, as far as he has had an opportunity of verifying them, perfectly 
accurate.* 

As [ think you will allow that the evidence just detailed to you is 
abundantly sufficient to establish the fact in question, we will now see 
whether any satisfactory account can be given for such changes being 
produced by such causes. ‘It does not appear to me improbable,” says 
Bonnet, “ that a certain kind of nutriment, and in more than usual abun- 
dance, may cause a development in the grubs of bees of organs which 
would never be developed without it. I can readily conceive, also, that, 
a habitation considerably more spacious, and differently placed, is abso- 
lutely necessary to the complete development of organs which the new 
nutriment may cause to grow in all directions.””® And again, with respect 
to the wings of the queen bee, which do not exceed those of the workers 
in length, he thinks that this may arise from their being of a. substance 
too stiff to admit of their extension. ‘Those parts and points that were 
in a state to yield most easily to the action which this kind of nutriment 
produced would be most prominent ; and the vertical position of the grub 


1 Schirach, 121. 2 Huber, ii. 453. 3 Bonner On Bees, 56. 

4 The same gentleman subsequently sent me the following memoranda :— 

July 10. 1820. A late second swarm was hived into a box constructed so that each comb 
could be taken out and examined separately. On the 7th of August the queen was removed, 
and each comb taken out and closely examined ; there was not the least appearance of any 
royal cells, but much brood and eggs in the common ones. On the 14th, three royal cells 
were observed nearly finished, with a large grub each. On the 16th, the three cells were 
sealed. On the 18th and 2Ist, they remained in the same state. On the 22d, two queens 
were found hatched; one was removed, and the other left with the stock, the remaining 
royal cell being still closed. On the morning of the 23d, a dead queen was thrown out of 
the hive; upon which examination being made, the royal cell left closed on the 22d was 
found open, and a living queen in the stock, which was allowed to remain. 

5 Huber, ii. 445. 

34 


398 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


and pupa, since nature does nothing in vain, may probably assist this 
action, and render the parts of the animal more capable of such exten- 
sion than if it continued in a horizontal position. 

We know, with respect to the human species and the larger animals, 
that numerous differences, both as to the form and relative proportion of 
parts, occur continually. The cause of these differences we cannot always 
ascertain ; yet in many instances they may either be derived from the 
nutriment which the embryo receives in the womb, or from the greater or 
Jess dimensions or higher or lower temperature of that organ—a case that 
analogically would not be very wide of that of the grub or embryo of a 
bee enclosed in a cell. Some of the differences in man I now allude to 
may often be caused by a particular diet in childhood ; a warmer or a 
colder, a looser or a tighter dress, or the like. Thus, for instance, the 
Egyptians, who went bare-headed, had their skulls remarkably thick ; 
while the Persians, who covered the head with a turban or mitre, were 
distinguished by the tenuity of theirs. Again, the inhabitants of certain 
districts are often remarkable for peculiarities of form, which are evidently 
produced by local circumstances. 

The following reasoning may not be inapplicable to the development 
or non-development, according to their food and habitation, of the ovaries 
of these insects. An infant tightly swathed, as was formerly the custom, 
in swaddling bands, without being allowed the free play of its little limbs, 
fed with unwholesome food, or uncherished by genial warmth, may from 
these circumstances have so imperfect a development of its organs as to 
be in consequence devoted to sterility. When a cow brings forth two 
calves, and one of them is a female, it is always barren, and partakes in 
part of the characters of the other sex.! In this instance, the space and 
food that in ordinary cases are appropriated to one are divided between 
two; so that a more contracted dwelling and a smaller share of nutriment 
seem to prevent the development of the ovaries. 

The following observations, mostly taken from an essay of the cele- 
brated anatomist John Hunter, in the Philosophical Transactions, since 
they are intimately connected with the subject that we are now consider- 
ing, will not be here misplaced. In animals just born, or very young, 
there are no peculiarities of shape, exclusive of the primary distinctions, 
by which one sex may be known from the other. ‘Thus secondary dis- 
tinctive characters, such as the beard in men, and the breasts in women, 
are produced at a certain period of life; and these secondary characters, 
in some instances, are changed for those of the other sex ; which does 
not arise from any action at the first formation, but takes place when the 
great command, “Increase and multiply,” ceases to operate.. Thus 
women in advanced life are sometimes distinguished by beards ; and after 
they have done laying, hen-birds occasionally assume the plumage of the 
cock: this has been observed more than once by ornithologists, more 
particularly with respect to the pheasant and the pea-hen.? For females 
to assume the secondary characters of males, seems certainly a more 


1 See J. Hunter's Treatise on certain parts of the Animal Economy. 
2 Philos. Trans. 1792, viii. 167. Hunter On certain Parts of the Animal CEconomy, p. 65. 
Latham, Synops. ii. 672. t. 60. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 399 


violent change, than for a worker bee, which may be regarded as a sterile 
female, in consequence of a certain process, to assume the secondary 
characters of a fertile female. 

With respect to the variations of instinct and character which result’ 
from the different modes of training the young bees that we are now 
considering, it would not, I think, be difficult to prove that causes at 
first sight equally inadequate have produced effects fully as important of 
the habits, tempers, and characters of men and other animals ; but as these 
will readily occur to you, I shall not now enlarge upon them. 

Did we know the causes of the various deviations, as to form and the 
like, observable in the three kingdoms of nature, and could apply them, 
we should be able to produce these deviations at our pleasure. This is 
exactly what the bees do. Their instinct teaches them that a certain 
kind of food, supplied to a grub inhabiting a certain dwelling, in a certain 
position, will produce -certain effects upon it, rendering it different from 
what it would have been under ordinary circumstances, and fitted to answer 
their peculiar wants. 

I trust that these arguments and probabilities will in some degree 
reconcile you to what at first sight seems so extraordinary and extravagant 
a doctrine. If not yet fully satisfied, I can only recommend your having 
recourse to experiments yourself. Leaving you, therefore, to this best 
mode of proof, I shall proceed to another part of my history :—but first 
I must mention an experiment of Reaumur’s which seems to come well 
in here. ‘oo ascertain whether the expectation of a queen was sufficient 
to keep alive the instinct and industry of the worker bees, he placed in 
a glazed hive some royal cells containing both grubs and pupe, and then 
introduced about 1000 or 1500 workers and some drones. ‘These workers, 
which had been deprived of their queen, at first destroyed some of the 
grubs in these cells; but.they clustered around two that were covered 
in, as if to impart warmth to the pupz they contained ; and on the follow- 
ing day they began to work upon the portions of comb with which he 
had supplied them, in order to fix and lengthen them. For two or three 
days the work went on very leisurely, but afterwards their labors assumed 
their usual character of indefatigable indusrry.! There is no difficulty, 
therefore, when a hive loses its sovereign, to supply the bees with an object 
that will interest them, and keep their works in progress. 

There are a few other facts with respect to the larve and pupe of the 
bees, which, before I enter upon the history of them in their perfect form, 
I shall now detail to you. Sixteen days is the time assigned to a queen 
for her existence in her preparatory states, before she is ready to emerge 
from her cell. Three she remains in the egg; when hatched she con- 
tinues feeding five more; when covered in she begins to spin her cocoon, 
which occupies another day ; as if exhausted by this labor, she now 
remains perfectly still for two days and sixteen hours; and then assumes 
the pupa, in which state she remains exactly four days and eight hours— 
making in all the period I have just named. A longer time, by four days, 
is required to bring the workers to perfection; their preparatory states 
occupying twenty days, and those of the male even twenty-four. The 
former consumes half a day more than the queen in spinning its cocoon,— 


1 Reaum. v. 271. 


400 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


a circumstance most probably occasioned by a singular difference in the 
structure and dimensions of this envelop, which I*shall explain to you 
presently. ‘Thus you see that the peculiar circumstances which change 
the form and functions of a bee accelerate its appearance as a perfect 
insect; and that by choosing a grub three days old, when the bees want 
a queen, they actually gain six days; for in this case she is ready to come 
forth in ten days, instead of sixteen, which would be required was a recently 
laid egg fixed upon. 

The larve of bees, though without feet, are not altogether without 
motion. ‘They advance from their first station at the bottom of the cell, 
as I before hinted, in a spiral direction. This movement, for the first 
three days, is so slow as to be scarcely perceptible ; but after this it is more 
easily discerned. The animal now makes two entire revolutions in about 
an hour and three quarters; and when the period of its metamorphosis 
arrives, it is scarcely more than two lines from the mouth of the cell. Its 
attitude, which is always the same, is a strong curve.? This occasions the 
inhabitant of a horizontal cell to be always perpendicular to ‘the horizon, 
and that of a vertical one to be parallel with it. 

A most remarkable difference, as I lately observed, takes place in 
spinning their cocoons,—the grubs of workers and drones spinning com- 
plete cocoons, while those that are spun by the females are incomplete, or 
open at the lower end, and covering only the head and trunk and the first 
segment of the abdomen. This variation is probably occasioned by the 
different forms of the cells: for, if a female larva be placed in a worker’s 
cell, it will spin a complete cocoon ; and, vice versd, if a worker larva be 
placed in a royal cell, its cocoon will be incomplete.? No provision of 
the Great Author of nature is in vain. In the present instance, the fact 
which we are considering is of great importance to the bees; for, were 
the females wholly covered by the thick texture of a cocoon, their destruc- 
tion by their rival competitors for the throne could not so readily be accom- 
plished: they either would not be able to reach them with their stings, or 
the stings might be detained by their barbs in’ the meshes of the cocoon, 
so that they would not be able to disengage them. On the use of this 
instinctive and murderous hatred of their rivals I shall soon enlarge. 

When our young prisoners are ready to emerge, they do not, like the 
ants, require the assistance of the workers, but themselves eat through the 
cocoon and the cell that incloses it. By a wise provision, which prevents 
the injury or destruction of a cell, they generally make their way through 
the cover or lid with which the workers had shut it up; though sometimes, 
but not often, a female will break through the side of her prison. 

Having thus shown you our little chemists in their preparatory states, 
and carried you from the egg to the cocoon, both of which may be deemed 
a kind of cradle, in which they are nursed to fit them for two very diffe- 
rent conditions of existence, | must now introduce you to a scene more 
interesting and diversified, in which all their wonderful instincts are dis- 
played in full action, and we see them exceed some of the most vaunted 
products of human wisdom, art, and skill. 


? Huber, i. 215. Schirach asserts, that in cold weather the disclosure of the imago takes 
place two days later than in warm; and Riem, that in a bad season the eggs will remain 
in the cells many months without hatching. (Schirach, 79. 241.) 

2 Schirach, t. 3, f. 10. 3 Huber, i. 224. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 401 


The queen-mother here demands our first attention, as the personage 
upon whom, when established in her regal dignity, the welfare and happi- 
ness of the apiarian community altogether depend. I shall begin my 
history with the events that befal her on her quitting the royal cradle, and 
appearing in the perfect state. And here you will find that the first 
moments of her life, prior to her election to lead a swarm or fill a vacant 
throne, are moments of the greatest uneasiness and vexation, if not of - 
extreme peril and vindictive and mortal warfare. The Homeric maxim, 
that “the government of many is not good!,” is fully adopted and rigor- 
ously adhered to in these societies. The jealous Semiramis of the hive 
will bear no rival near her throne. There are usually not less than six- 
teen, and sometimes not less than twenty, royal cells in the same nest ; 
you may therefore conceive what a sacrifice is made when one only is 
suffered to live and to reign. But here a distinction obtains which should 
not be overlooked: in some instances a single queen only is wanted to 
govern her native hive; in others several are necessary to lead the swarms. 
In the first case, inevitable death is the lot of all but one; in the other, as 
many as are wanted are preserved from destruction by the precautions 
taken on that occasion, under the direction of an all-wise Providence, by 
the workers. I shall enlarge a little on each of these cases. In the 
formicary, as we have seen, rival queens live together very harmoniously 
without molesting each other; but there is that instinctive jealousy in a 
queen bee, that no sooner does she discover the existence of another in 
the hive than she is put into a state of the most extreme agitation, and is 
not easy until she has attacked and destroyed her. 

Naturalists had observed that when there were two queens in the same 
hive, one of them soon perished ; but some supposed (this was the opinion 
of Schirach and Riem) that the workers destroyed the supernumeraries. 
Reaumur, however, conjectured that these queens attacked each other; 
and his conjecture has been since confirmed by the actual observation of 
other naturalists. Blassiere, the translator of Schirach, tells us, as what 
he had himself witnessed, that the strongest queen kills her rival with her 
sting ; and the same is asserted by Huber, whose opportunities of observa- 
tion were greater than those of any of his precursors.” 

The queen that is first liberated from her confinement, and has assumed 
the perfect or imago state (it is to be supposed that the author is here 
speaking of a hive which has lost the old queen), soon after this event 
goes to visit the royal cells that are still inhabited. She darts with fury 
upon the first with which she meets; by means of her jaws she gnaws a 
hole large enough to introduce the end of her-abdomen, and with her 
sting, before the included female is in a condition to defend herself or 
resist her attack, she gives her a mortal wound. The workers, who remain 
passive spectators of this assassination, after she quits the victim of her 
jealousy, enlarge the breach that she has made, and drag forth the carcass 
of a queen just emerged from the thin membrane that envelops the pupa. 
If the object of her attack be still in the pupa state, she is stimulated by 
a less violent degree of rage, and contents herself with making a breach 
in the cell: when this happens, the death of the inclosed insect is equally 


1? Ovk ayadn i wodvKotpaven, els xotpavos eorw. 


* Schirach, 209. note *. Huber, i. 170. 
34* 


402 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
; 

certain, for the workers enlarge the breach, pull it out, and it perishes.! 
If it happens, as it sometimes does, that two queen are disclosed at the 
same time, the care of Providence to prevent the hive from being wholly 
despoiled of a governor is singularly manifested by a remarkable trait in 
their instinct, which, when mutual destruction seems inevitable, makes 
them separate from each other as if panic-struck. “Two young queens,” 
says M. Huber, “left their cells one day, almost at the same moment; as 
soon as they came within sight, they darted upon each other, as if inflamed 
by the most ungovernable anger, and placed themselves in such an attitude 
that the antenne of each were held by the jaws of its antagonist; head 
was opposed to head, trunk to trunk, abdomen to abdomen ; and they had 
only to bend the extremity of the latter, and they would have fallen 
reciprocal victims to eaclr other’s sting.” But nature having decreed that 
these duels should not be fatal to both combatants, as soon as they were 
thus circumstanced a panic fear seemed to strike them, and they disen- 
gaged themselves, and each fled away. After a few minutes were expired, 
the attack was renewed in a similar manner with the same issue ; till at 
last one suddenly seizing the other by her wing, mounted upon her and 
inflicted a mortal wound.” 

The combats I have here described to you took place between virgin 
queens; but M. Huber found that those which had been impregnated 
were actuated by the same animosity, and attacked royal cells with a fury 
equally destructive. When another fertile queen had been introduced 
into this hive, a singular scene ensued, which proves how well aware the 
workers are that they cannot prosper with two sovereigns. Soon after 
she was introduced, a circle of bees was formed round the stranger,—not 
to compliment her on her arrival, or pay her the usual homage, but to 
confine her, and prevent her escape; for they insensibly agglomerated 
themselves in such numbers round her, and hemmed her in so closely, that 
in about a minute she was completely a prisoner. While this was trans- 
acting, what was equally remarkable, other workers assembled in clusters 
round the legitimate queen, and impeded all her motions; so that soon 
she was not more at liberty than the intruder. It seemed as if the bees 
foresaw the combat that was to ensue between the two rivals, and were 
impatient for the event; for they only confined them when they appeared 
to avoid each other. ‘To witness the homage, respect, and love that they 
usually manifest’ to their lawful ruler, the anxiety concerning her which 
they often exhibit, and the distrust which for a time (as we shall see here- 
after) they usually show towards strange ones even when deprived of their 
own, one would expect that, rather than permit such a_ perilous combat, 
they would unite in the defence of their sovereign, and cause the inter- 
loper to perish under the stroke of their fatal stings. But no; the contest 
for empire must be between the rival candidates ; no worker must interfere 
in any other way than that which I have described; no contending armies 
must fight the battles of their sovereigns, for the law of succession seems 
to be “ detur fortiort.” But to return to my narrative. The legitimate 
queen appearing inclined to move towards that part of the comb on which 
her rival was stationed, the bees immediately began to retire from the 
space that intervened between them, so that there was soon a clear arena 


» Huber, i. 171. 2 Huber, i. 174. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 403 


for the combat. When they could discern each other, the rightful 
queen, rushing furiously upon the pretender, seized her with her jaws 
near the root of the wings, and, after fixing her without power of motion 
against the comb, with one stroke of her sting dispatched her. If 
ever sO many queens are introduced into a hive, all but one will perish, 
and that one will have won the throne by her own unassisted valor and 
strength. Sometimes a strange queen attempts of herself to enter a hive: 
in this case the workers, who are upon the watch, and who examine every 
thing that presents itself, immediately seize her with their jaws by the 
legs or wings, and hem her in so straitly with a clustered circle of guards, 
turning their heads on all sides towards her, that it is impossible for her to 
penetrate within. If they retain her prisoner too long, she dies either 
from the want of food or air, but never from their stings.’ 

Here you may perhaps feel curious to know, supposing the reigning 
queen to die or be killed, and the bees to have discovered their loss, 
whether they would then receive a foreigner that offers herself to them or 
is introduced amongst them. Reaumur says they would do this immedi- 
ately? ; but Huber, who had better means of observing them, and studied 
them with more undivided attention, affirms that this will not be the case, 
unless twenty-four hours have elapsed since the death of the old queen. 
Previously to this period, as if they were absorbed by grief at their 
calamity, or indulged a fond hope of her revival, an intruder would be 
treated exactly as I have described. But when the period just mentioned 
is past, they will receive any queen that is presented to them with the 
customary homage, aud she may occupy the vacant throne.® 

I must now beg you to attend to what takes place in the second 
case that I mentioned, where queens are wanted to lead forth swarms. 
Here you will, with reason, suppose that nature has instilled some instinct 
into the bees, by which these necessary individuals are rescued from the 
fury of the reigning sovereign. 

Did the old queen of the hive remain in it till the young ones were 
ready to come forth, her instinctive jealousy would lead her to attack them 
all as successively produced ; and being so much older and stronger, the 
probability is that she would destroy them, in which case there could be 
no swarms, and the race would perish. But this is wisely prevented by 
a circumstance which invariably takes place—that the first swarm is con- 
ducted by this queen, and not by a newly disclosed one, as Reaumur and 
others have supposed. Previously to her departure, after her great laying 
of male eggs in the month of May, she oviposits in the royal cells when 
about three or four lines in length, which the workers have in the mean- 
time constructed. These, however, are not all furnished in one day,—a 
most essential provision, in consequence of which the queens come forth 
successively, in order to lead successive swarms. ‘There is something sin- 
gular in the manner in which the workers treat the young queens that are 
to lead the swarms. After the cells are covered in, one of their first 
employments is to remove here and there a _ portion of the wax from their 
surface, so as to render it unequal ; and immediately before the last meta- 
morphosis takes place, the walls are so thin that all the motions of the 
inclosed pupa are perceptible through them. On the seventh day the 


1 Huber, i. 186. ? Reaum. v, 268. 3 Huber, i. 190. 


404 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


part covering the head and trunk of the young female, if I may so speak, 
is almost entirely unwaxed. ‘This operation of the bees facilitates her 
exit, and probably renders the evaporation of the superabundant fluids of 
the body of the pupa more easy. 

You will conclude, perhaps, when all things are thus prepared for the 
coming forth of the inclosed female, that she will quit her cell at the 
regular period, which is seven days :—but you would be mistaken. Were 
she indeed permitted to pursue her own inclinations, this would be the 
case; but here the bees show how much they are guided in their instinct 
by circumstances and the wants of their society; for did the new queen 
leave her cell, she would immediately attack and destroy those in the other 
cells; a proceeding which they permit, as I have before stated, when they 
only want a successor to a defunct or a lost sovereign. As soon, therefore, 
as the workers perceive—which the transparency of the cell permits them 
to do—that the young queen has cut circularly through her cocoon, they 
immediately solder the cleft up with some particles of wax, and so keep 
her a prisoner against her will. Upon this, as if to complain of such 
treatment, she emits a distinct sound, which excites no pity in the breasts 
of her subjects, who detain her a prisoner two days longer than nature 
has assigned for her confinement. In the interim, she sometimes thrusts 
her tongue through the cleft she has made, drawing it in and out till she is 
noticed by the workers, to make them understand that she is in want of 
food. Upon perceiving this they give her honey, till her hunger being 
satisfied she draws her tongue back—upon which they stop the orifice with 
wax. 

You may think it perhaps extraordinary that the workers should thus 
endeavor to retard the appearance of their young females beyond its 
natural limit; but when I explain to you the reason for this seeming 
incongruity of instinct, you will adore the wisdom that implanted it. 
Were a queen permitted to leave her cell as soon as the natural term for 
it arrived, it would require some time to fit her for flight, and to lead forth 
a swarm; during which interval a troublesome task would be imposed 
upon the workers, who must constantly detain her a prisoner to prevent 
her from destroying her rivals, which would require the labors and atten- 
tion of a much larger number than are necessary to keep her confined to 
her cell. On this account they never suffer her to come forth till she is 
perfectly fit to take her flight. When at length she is permitted to do this, 
if she approaches the other royal cells the workers on guard seem greatly 
irritated against her, and pull and bite and chase her away; and she 
enjoys tranquility only while she keeps at a distance from them. As her 
instinct is constantly urging her to attack them, this proceeding is frequently 
repeated. Sometimes, standing in a particular and commanding attitude, 
she utters that authoritative sound which so much affects the bees ; they 
then all hang down their heads and remain motionless ; but as soon as it 
ceases, they resume their opposition. At last she becomes violently 
agitated, and communicating her agitation to others, the confusion more 
and more increases, till a swarm leaves the hive, which she either precedes 
or follows. In the same manner the other young queens are treated while 
there are swarms to go forth; but when the hive is sufficiently thinned, 


} Huber, i. 256. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 405 


and it becomes troublesome to guard them in the manner here described, 
they come forth unnoticed, and fight unimpeded till one alone remains to 
fill the deserted throne of the parent hive. You see here the reason why 
the eggs that produce these queens are not laid at the same time, but after 
some interval, that they may come forth successively. For did they all 
make their appearance together, it would be a much more laborious and 
difficult task to keep them from destroying each other. 

When the bees thus delay the entrance of the young queens into their 
world, they invariably let out the oldest first; and they probably know 
their progress to maturity by the emission of the sound lately mentioned. 
The accurate Huber took the trouble to mark all the royal cells in a hive 
as soon as the workers had covered them in, and he found that they were 
all liberated according to seinority. Those first covered first emit the 
sound, and so on successively ; whence he conjectures that this is the sign 
by which the workers discover their age. As their captivity, however, is 
sometimes prolonged to eight or ten days, this circumstance in that time 
may be forgotten. In this case he supposes that their tones grow stronger 
as they grow older, by which the workers may be enabled to distinguish 
them. It is remarkable that no guard is placed round the mute queens 
bred according to the Lusatian method, which, when the time for their 
appearance is come, are not detained in captivity a single moment; but, 
as you have heard, are left to fight, conquer, or die.? 

You must not think, however, from what I have been saying, that the 
old queen never destroys the young ones previously to her leading forth 
the earliest swarm. She is allowed the most uncontrolled liberty of 
action; and if she chooses to approach and destroy the royal cells, her 
subjects do not oppose her. It sometimes happens, when unfavorable 
weather retards the first swarm, that all the royal progeny perishes by the 
sting of their mother, and then no swarm takes place.’ It is to be observed 
that she never attacks a royal cell till its inhabitant is ready to assume the 
pupa; therefore much will depend upon their age. When they arrive at 
this state, her horror of these cells, and aversion to them, are extreme: 
she attacks, perhaps, and destroys several ; but finding it too laborious, for 
they are often numerous, to destroy the whole, the same agitation is caused 
in her as if she were forcibly prevented, and she becomes disposed to 
depart, rather than remain in the midst of her rivals, though her own 
offspring. 

But though the bees, in one of these cases, appear such unconcerned 
spectators of the destruction of royal personages, or rather the applauders 
and inciters of the bloody fact, and in the other show little respect to 
them, put such a restraint upon their persons, and manifest such disregard 
to their wishes; yet when they are once acknowledged as governors of 
the hive, and leaders of the colony, their instinct assumes a new and won- 
derful direction. From this moment they become the “publica cura” 
the objects of constant and universal attention ; and wherever they go, 
are greeted by a homage which evinces the entire devotion of their sub- 
jects. You seemed amused and interested in no slight degree by what I 
related in a former letter of the marked respect paid by the ants to their 
females? ; but this will bear no comparison with that shown by the inhab- 


1 Huber, i. 286. 2 See above, p. 354—355. 


s 


406 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


itants of the hive to their queen. She appears to be the very soul of all 
their actions, and the centre of their instincts. Whén they are deprived 
of her, or of the means of replacing her, they lose all their activity, and 
pursue no longer their daily labors. In vain the flowers tempt them with 
their nectar and ambrosial dust: they collect neither; they elaborate no 
wax, and build no cells; they scarcely seem to exist; and, indeed, 
would soon perish, were not the means of restoring their monarch put 
within their reach. But, if a small piece of comb containing the brood 
grubs of workers be given to them, all seem endued with new life: their 
instincts revive ; they immediately set about building royal cells; they 
feed with their appropriate food the grubs they have selected, and every 
thing proceeds in the usual routine. Virgil has described this attachment 
of the bees to their sovereign with great truth and spirit in the following 
lines :— 
“ Lydian nor Mede so much his king adores, 

Nor those on Nilus’ or Hydaspes’ shores : 

The state united stands while he remains ; 

But should he fall, what dire confusion reigns ! 

Their waxen combs and honey, Jate their joy, 

With grief and rage distracted, they destroy : 

He guards the works, with awe they him surround, 

And crowd about him with triumphant sound ; 

Him frequent on their duteous shoulders bear, 

Bleed, fall, and die for him in glorious war.” 

M. Huber thus describes the consequences of the loss of a queen. 
When the queen is removed from a hive, at first the bees seem not to 
perceive it, their order and tranquillity not being disturbed, and their labors 
proceeding as usual. About an hour after her departure, inquietude 
begins to manifest itself amongst them; the care of the young brood no 
longer engages their attention, and they run here and there, as if in great 
agitation. ‘This agitation, however, is at first confined to a small portion 
of the community. The bees that are first sensible of their loss meet 
with others; they mutually cross their antenne, and strike them lightly. 
By this action they appear to communicate the sad intelligence to those 
who receive the blow, who in their turn impart it in the same way to 
others. Disorder and confusion increase rapidly, till the whole population 
is in a tumult. Then the workers may be seen running over the combs, 
and against each other, impetuously rushing to the entrance and quitting 
the hive; from thence they spread themselves all around; they re-enter, 
and go out again and again. ‘The hum in the hive becomes very loud, 
and increases the tumult, which lasts two or three hours, rarely four or 
five: they then return, and resume their wonted care of the young; and 
if the hive be visited twenty-four hours after the departure of the queen, 
it will be seen that they have taken steps to repair their loss by filling 
some of the cells with a larger quantity of jelly than is the usual portion 
of common larve ; which, however, is intended, it seems, not for the food 
of the inhabitant, but for a cushion to elevate it, since it is found uncon- 
sumed in the cell when the grub has descended into the pyramidal habita- 
tion afterwards prepared for it.! 

If, after being removed, their old queen is restored to the hive, they 
instantly recognize her, and pay her the usual attentions ; but if a strange 


1 Huber, ii. 396. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 407 


one be introduced within the first twelve hours after the old one is lost, 
she is kept a close prisoner till she perishes: if twenty-four hours, as I 
have before hinted, have expired since they lost their queen, and you 
introduce a new one, at the moment you set this stranger upon a comb 
the workers that are near her first touch her with their antenne, and then 
pass their proboscis over all parts of her body; place is next given to 
others, who salute her in the same manner; all then beat their wings at 
the same time, and range themselves in a circle round their new sovereign. 
A kind of agitation is now communicated to the whole surface of the 
comb, which brings all the bees upon it to see what is going forward. 
This may be called the first shout of the applauding multitude to welcome 
the arrival of their new sovereign. The circle of courtiers increases ; 
they vibrate their wings and bodies, but without tumult, as if their sensa- 
tions were very agreeable. When she begins to move, the circle opens 
to let her pass, and all follow her steps. She is received with similar 
demonstrations of loyalty in the other parts of the hive, is soon acknowl- 
edged queen by all, and begins to lay eggs. Reaumur put some bees 
into a hive without their queen, and then introduced to them one that he 
had taken when half perished with cold, and kept in a box, in which she 
had covered herself with powder. The bees immediately owned her for 
their queen, employed themselves very anxiously in cleaning her and 
warming her, sometimes turning her upon her back for this purpose, and 
then began to construct cells in their habitation.’ Even when the bees 
have got young brood, have built or are building royal cells, and are 
engaged ih feeding these hopes of their hive, knowing that their great aim 
is already accomplished, they cease all these employments when this 
intruder comes amongst them. 

With regard to the ordinary attention and homage that they pay to 
their sovereigns, the bees do more than respect their queen, says Reaumur ; 
they are constantly on the watch to make themselves useful to her, and 
to render her every kind office; they are for ever offering her honey ; 
they lick her with their proboscis, and wherever she goes she has a court 
to attend upon her.? It may here be observed, that the stimulant which 
excites the bees to these acts of homage is the pregnant state of their 
queen, and her fitness to maintain the population of the hive; all they do 
being with a view to the public good: for while she remains a virgin she 
is treated with the utmost indifference, which is exchanged, as soon as 
impregnation has taken place, for the above marks of attachment.® 

The instinct of the bees, however, does not always enable them to 
distinguish a partially fertile queen from one that is universally so. What 
I mean is this: a queen, whose impregnation is retarded beyond the 
twenty-eighth day of her whole existence, lays only male egg, which 
are of no use whatever to the community, unless they are at the same 
time provided with a sufficient supply of workers. Yet even a queen of 
this description, and sometimes one that is entirely sterile, is treated by 
them with the same respect and homage as a fertile one. This seems to 
evince an amiable feeling in these creatures, attachment to the person as 
well as to the functions of the sovereign; which is further manifested by 
their unwillingness at first to receive a new sovereign upon the loss or 


1 Reaum. v. 262. 2 Ibid. v. Pref. xv. ‘3 Huber, i. 269. 


408 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


death of their old one. Nay, this respect is sometimes shown to the 
carcass of a defunct queen, which Huber assures ‘Us he has seen bees 
treat with the same attention that they had shown her when alive, for a 
long time preferring her inanimate corpse to the fertile queens that he 
offered to them.t He attributes this to some agreeable b Rear which 
they experience from their queens, independent of their fecundity. But 
since virgin queens, as we have seen, do not excite it, more probably it is 
a remnant of their former attachment, first excited by her fecundity, and 
afterwards strengthened and continued by habit. 

I may here introduce an interesting anecdote related by Reaumur, 
which strongly marks the attachment of bees to their queen when appa- 
rently lifeless. He took one out of the water quite motionless, and seem- 
ingly dead, which had lost part of one of its legs. Bringing it home, he 
placed it amongst some workers that he had found in the same situation, 
most of which he had revived by means of warmth ; some, however, still 
being in as bad a state as the poor queen. No sooner did these revived 
workers perceive the latter in this wretched condition, than they appeared 
to compassionate her case, and did not cease to lick her with their tongues 
till she showed signs of returning animation ; which the bees no sooner 
perceived, than they set up a general hum, as if for joy at the happy 
event. All this time they paid no attention to the workers, who were in 
the same miserable state.” 

On a former occasion I have mentioned the laying of the eggs by the 
queen ; but as I did not then at all enlarge upon it, I shall now explain 
the process more in detail. In a subsequent letter I shall notice what has 
puzzled learned apiarists—her fecundation; which is now ascertained 
beyond contradiction, from the observations of M. Huber, to take place 
in the open air, and to be followed by the death of the unfortunate male.* 
It is to be recollected that, from September to April, generally speaking, 
there are no males in the hives ; yet during this period the queen often ovipos- 
its: a former fecundation, therefore, must fertilize all the eggs laid in this in- 
terval. The impregnation, in order to ensure complete fertility, must not be 
too long retarded: for, as I before observed, if this be delayed beyond 
the twenty-eighth day of her existence, her ovaries become so vitiated 
that she can no longer lay eggs that will produce workers, but can only 
furnish the hive with a male population ; which, however high a privilege 
it may be accounted amongst men, is the reverse of it amongst the bees. 
When this is the case, the abdomen of the queen becomes so enlarged 
that she is no longer able to fly*; and, what is remarkable, she loses that 
instinctive animosity which stimulates the fertile ones to attack their rivals.® 
Thus she seems to own that she is not equal to the duties of her station, 
and can tolerate another to discharge them in her room. When we con- 
sider how much virgin queens are slighted by their subjects, we may 
suppose that nature urges them to take the opportunity of the first warm 
day, when the males fly forth, to pair with one of them. 

When fecundation has not been retarded, forty-six hours after it has 
taken place the queen begins to lay eggs that will produce workers, and 
continues for the subsequent eleven months, more or less, to lay them 


' Huber, i. 322. 2 Reaum. v. 265. 3 Huber, i. 63—. 4 Schirach, 257. 
5 Huber, i. 319—, 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 409 


solely ; and it is only after this period that an uninterrupted laying of 
male eggs commences. But when it has been retarded, after the same 
number of hours she begins laying male eggs, and continues to produce 
these alone during her whole life. From hence-it should seem to follow 
that the former kind of eggs are first in the oviducts, and if impregnation 
be not effected within a given time, that all the worker embryos perish. 
Yet how this can take place with respect to those that in a fertile queen 
should succeed the laying of male eggs, or be produced in the second 
year of her life, seems difficult to conceive ;—or how the male embryos 
escape this fate, which destroys all the female, both those that are to 
precede them and those that are to follow them. Is it impossible that the 
sex of the embryo may be determined by the period at which the aura 
seminalis vivified it, and by the state of the ovary at that time? In one 
state of the ovary this principle may cause the embryos to become workers, 
in another males. And something of this kind perhaps may be the cause 
of hermaphrodites in other animals. But this I give merely as conjec- 
ture!; the truth seems enveloped in mystery that we cannot yet penetrate. 
Huber is of opinion that a single impregnation fertilizes all the eggs that 
a queen will produce during her whole life, which is sometimes more than 
two years. But of this enough. 

I said that forty-six hours after impregnation the queen begins laying 
worker eggs ;—this is not, however, invariable. When her impregnation 
takes place late in the year, she does not begin laying till the following 
spring. Schirach asserts, that in one season a single female will lay from 
70,000 to 100,000 eggs.2 Reaumur says, that upon an average she lays 
about two hundred in a day, a moderate swarm consisting of 12,000, 
which are-laid in two months ; and Huber, that she lays above a hundred. 
All these statements, the observations being made in different climates, 
and perhaps under different circumstances, may be true. The laying of 
worker eggs begins in February, sometimes so early as January.* After 
this, in the spring, the great laying of male eggs commences, lasting thirty 
days ; in which time about 2000 of these eggs are laid. Another laying 
of them, but less considerable, takes place in autumn. In the season of 
oviposition, the queen may be discerned traversing the combs in all direc- 
tions with a slow step, and seeking for cells proper to receive her eggs. 
As she walks she keeps her head inclined, and seems to examine, one by 
one, all the cells she meets with. When she finds one to her purpose, 
she immediately gives to her abdomen the curve necessary to enable it to 
reach the orifice of the cell, and to introduce it within it. ‘The eggs are 
set in the angle of the pyramidal bottom of the cell, or in one of the 
hollows formed by the conflux of the sides of the rhombs, and being 
besmeared with a kind of gluten, stand upright. If, however, it be a 
female that lays only male eggs, they are deposited upon the lowest of 
the sides of the cell, as she is unable to reach the bottom.® 


1 This conjecture receives strong confirmation from the following observations of Sir E. 
Home, which I met with since it came into my mind. From the nipples present in man, 
which sometimes even afford milk, and from the general analogy between the male and 
female organs of generation, he supposes the germ is originally fitted to become either sex : 
and that which it shall be is determined at the time of impregnation by some unknown 
cause.—Philos. Trans., 1799, 1957. 

2 j, 106—. 3 Schirach, 7. 13. 

4 Schirach, 13. Thorley, 109. , 5 Bonnet, x. 258. 8vo. ed. 


30 


410 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


While our prolific lady is engaged in this employment, her court con- 
sists of from four to twelve attendants, which aré*deposed nearly in a 
circle, with their heads turned towards her. After laying from two to six 
eggs, she remains still, reposing for eight or nine minutes. During this 
interval the bees in her train redouble their attentions, licking her fondly 
with their tongues. Generally speaking, she lays only one egg in a cell; 
but when she is pressed, and there are not cells enough, from two to four 
have been found in one. In this case, as if they were aware of the con- 
sequences, the provident workers remove all but one. From an experi- 
ment of Huber’s, it appears that the instinct of the queen imvariably 
directs her to deposit worker eggs in worker cells ; for when he confined 
one, during her course of laying worker eggs, where she could only come 
at male cells, she refused to oviposit in them ; and trying in vain to make 
her escape, they at length dropped from her; upon which the workers 
devoured them. Retarded queens, however, lose this instinct, and often, 
though they lay only male eggs, oviposit in worker cells, and even in 
royal ones. In this latter case the workers themselves act as if they 
suffered in their instinct from the imperfect state of their queen ; for they 
feed these male larve with royal jelly, and treat them as they would a 
real queen. Though male eggs deposited in worker cells produce small 
males, their education in a royal cell with “royal dainties” adds nothing 
to their ordinary dimensions.} 

The swarming of bees is a very curious and interesting subject, to 
which, since a female is the sine gud non on this occasion, | may very 
properly call your attention here. You will recollect that I said some- 
thing upon the principle of emigrations, when I was amusing you with 
the history of ants; but the object with them seems to be merely a change 
of station for one more convenient or Jess exposed to injury, and not to 
diminish a superabundant population. Whereas in the societies of the 
hive-bee, the latter is the general cause of emigrations, which invariably 
take place every year, if their numbers require it; if not, when the male 
eggs are laid no royal cells are constructed, and no swarm is led forth. 
What might be the case with ants, were they confined to hives, we cannot 
say. Formicaries in general are capable of indefinite enlargement, there- 
fore want of room does not cause emigration ;—but bees being confined 
to a given space, which they possess not the means of enlarging, to avoid 
the ill effects resulting from being too much crowded, when their popula- 
tion exceeds a certain limit they must necessarily emigrate. Sometimes— 
for instance, when wasps have got into a hive—the bees will leave it, 
in order to fly from an inconvenience or enemy which they cannot other- 
wise avoid ; but it does not very often happen that they wholly desert 
a hive. 

Apiarists tell us that, in this country, the best season for swarming is 
from the middle of May till the middle of June; but swarms sometimes 
occur so early as the beginning of April, and as late as the middle of 
August.? The first swarm, as I before observed, is led by the reigning 
queen, and takes place when she is so much reduced in size, in conse- 
quence of the number of eggs she has laid (for previously to oviposition 
her gravid body is so heavy that she can scarcely drag it along), as to 


1 Huber, i. 122, * Keys On Bees, 76. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. All 


enable her to fly with ease. The most indubitable sign that a hive is 
preparing to swarm,—so says Reaumur,—is when on a sunny morning, 
the weather being favorable to their labors, few bees go out of a hive, 
from which on the preceding day they had issued in great numbers, and 
little pollen is collected. This circumstance, he observes, must be very 
embarrassing to one who attempts to explain all their proceedings upon 
principles purely mechanical. Does it not prove, he asks, that all the 
inhabitants of a hive, or almost all, are aware of a project that will not 
be put in execution before noon, or some hours later? For why should 
bees, who worked the day before with so much activity, cease their labors 
in a habitation which they are to quit at noon, were they not aware that 
they should soon abandon it?! The appearance of the males, and the 
clustering of the population at the mouth of the hive (though this last is 
less to be relied upon, being often occasioned by extreme heat), are also 
indications of the approach of this event. A good deal depends, how- 
ever, on the warmth of the atmosphere and the state of the weather either 
to accelerate or retard it. Another sign is a general hum in the evening, 
which is continued even during the night,—all seems to be in a bustle, 
the greatest restlessness agitates the bees. Sometimes, to hear this hum, 
the ear must be placed close to the hive, when clear and sharp sounds 
may be distinguished, which appear to be produced by the vibration of 
the wings of a single bee. ‘This hum by some has been gravely con- 
strued into an harangue of the queen to animate her subjects to the great 
undertaking which she now meditates—the founding of a new empire. 
There sometimes seem to happen suddenly amongst them, says Reaumur, 
events which put all the bees in motion, for which no account can be 
given. If you observe a hive with attention, you may often remaii a 
long time and hear only a slight murmur ; and then, all in a moment, a 
sonorous hum will be excited, and the workers, as if seized with a panic 
terror, may be seen quitting their various labors, and running off in dif- 
ferent directions. At these moments if a young queen goes out, she will 
be followed by a numerous troop. 

Huber has given a very lively and interesting account of the interior 
proceedings of the hive on this occasion. ‘The queen, as soon as she 
began to exhibit signs of agitation, no longer laid her eggs with order as 
before, but irregularly, as if she did not know what she was about. She 
ran over the bees in her way; they in their turn struck her with their 
antenne, and mounted upon her back; none offered her honey, but she 
helped herself to it from the cells in her path. ‘The usual homage of a 
court attending round her was no longer paid. Those, however, that were 
excited by her motions followed her, rousing such as were still tranquil 
upon the combs. She soon had traversed the whole hive, when the 
agitation -became general. ‘The workers, now no longer attentive to the 
young brood, ran about in all directions; even those that returned from 
foraging, before the agitation was at its height, no sooner entered the hive 
than they participated in these tumultuous movements, and, neglecting to 
free themselves from the masses'of pollen on their hind legs, ran wildly - 
about. At length there was a general rush to the outlets of the hive, 
which the queen accompanied, and the swarm took place.” 


) Reaum. v. 611. ? Huber, i. 251. 


412 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


It is to be observed that this agitation, excited by the queen, increases 
the customary heat of the hive to a very high temperature, which the 
action of the sun augments till it becomes intolerable, and which often 
causes the ‘bees accumulated near the mouth of the hive to perspire so 
copiously, that those near the bottom, who support the weight of the rest, 
appear drenched with the moisture. ‘This intolerable heat determines 
the most irresolute to leave the hive. Immediately before the swarming, 
a louder hum than usual is heard; many bees take flight; and if the 
queen be at their head, or soon follows them, in a moment the rest rise 
in crowds after her into the air, and the element is filled with bees 
as thick as the falling snow. ‘The queen at first does not alight upon 
the branch on which the swarm fixes; but as soon as a group is formed 
and clustered, she joins it: after this it thickens more and more, all the 
bees that are in the air hastening to their companions and their queen, 
so as to form a living mass of animals supporting themselves upon each 
by the claws of their feet. Thus they sometimes are so concatenated, 
each bee suspending its legs to those of another, as to form living chap- 
lets.1 After this they soon become tranquil, and none are seen in the 
air. Before they are housed they often begin to construct a little comb 
on the branch on which they alight.2 Sometimes it happens that two 
queens go out with the same swarm; and the result is, that the swarm 
at first divides into two bodies, one under each leader; but as one of 
these groups is generally much less numerous than the other, the smallest 
at last joins the largest, accompanied by the queen to whom they had 
attached themselves; and, when they are hived, this unfortunate candi- 
date for empire falls sooner or later a victim to the jealousy of her rival. 
Till this great question is decided, the bees do not settle to their usual 
labors. If no queen goes out with a swarm, they return to the hive from 
whence they came. 

As in regular monarchies, so in this of the bees, the first born is probably 
the fortunate candidate for the throne. She is usually the most active 
and vigorous; the most able to take flight; and in the best condition to 
lay eggs. ‘Though the queen that is victorious, and mounts the throne, is 
not, as Virgil asserts, resplendent with gold and purple, and her rival 
hideous, slothful, and unwieldy®, yet some differences are observable; the 
successful candidate is usually redder and larger than the others: these 
Jast, upon dissection, appear to have no eggs ready for laying, while the 
former, which is a powerful recommendation, is usually full of them. Eggs 
are commonly found in the cells twenty-four hours after swarming, or at 
the latest two or three days. 

You may think, perhaps, that the bees which emigrate from the parent 
hive are the youth of the colony; but this is not the case, for bees of all 

1 Some critics have found fault with Mr. Southey for ascribing, in his Curse of Kehama, 
to Camdeo, the Cupid of Indian mythology, a bow strung with bees. The idea is not so 
absurd as they imagine; and the poet doubtless was led to it by his knowledge of the natu- 


ral history of these animals, and that they form themselves into strings or chaplets.—See 
Reaum. v. t. xxii. f. 3. 
2 Reaumur, 615—644. 
3 * Alcer erit maculis auro squalentibus ardens, 
Nam duo sunt genera) hic melior, insignis et ore, 
t rutilis clarus squamis: ille horridus alter 
Desidia latamque trahens inglorius alvum.” 
Georg. iv. 91—. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 413 


ages unite to form the swarms. The numbers of which they consist vary 
much. Reaumur calls 12,000 a moderate swarm; and he mentions one 
which amounted to more than three times that number (40,000). A swarm 
seldom or never takes place except when the sun shines, and the air is 
calm. Sometimes, when every thing seems to prognosticate swarming, a 
cloud passing over the sun calms the agitation ; and afterwards, upon his 
shining forth again, the tumult is renewed, keeps augmenting, and the 
swarm departs.!. On this account the confinement of the queens, before 
related, is observed to be more protracted in bad weather. 

The longest interval between the swarms is from seven to nine days, 
which usually is the space that intervenes between the first and the 
second. The next flies sooner, and the last sometimes departs the day 
after that which preceded it. Fifteen or eighteen days, in favorable 
weather, are usually sufficient for throwing the four swarms. The old 
queen, when she takes flight with the first swarm, leaves plenty of brood 
in the cells, which soon renew the population.” 

It is not without example, though it rarely happens, that a swarm con- 
ducted by the old queen increases so much in the space of three weeks as 
to send forth a new colony. Being already impregnated, she is in a con- 
dition to oviposit as soon as there are cells ready to receive her eggs; and 
an all-wise Providence has so ordered it, that at this time she lays only 
such as produce workers. And it is the first employment of her subjects 
to construct cells for this purpose. The young queens that conduct the 
secondary swarms usually pair the day after they are settled in their new 
abode ; when the indifference with which their subjects have hitherto 
treated them is exchanged for the usual respect and homage. 

We may suppose that one motive with the bees for following the old 
queen is their respect for her; but the reasons that induce them to follow 
the virgin queens, to whom they not only appear to manifest no attach- 
ment, but rather the reverse, seem less easy to be assigned. Probably the 
high temperature of the hive during these times of tumultuous agita- 
tion may be the principal cause that operates upon them. In’a populous 
hive the thermometer commonly stands between 92° and 97°; but during 
the tumult that precedes swarming it rises above 104°, a heat intolerable 
to these animals.* This is M. Huber’s opinion. Yet still, though a high 
temperature will well account for the departure of the swarm from the 
hive with a virgin queen, if there were really no attachment (as he appears 
to think), is it not extraordinary, that when this cause no longer operates 
upon them, they should agglomerate about her, as they always do, be 
unsettled and agitated without her, and quiet when she is with them? 
Is it not reasonable to suppose that the instinct which teaches them 
what is necessary for the preservation of their society,—at the same time 
that it shows them that without a queen that society cannot be preserv- 
ed,—impels them in every case to the mode of treattmg her which will 
‘most effectually influence her conduct, and give it that direction which is 
most beneficial to the community ? 

Yet, with respect to the treatment of queens, instinct does not invaria- 

1 Bees are generally thought to foresee the state of the weather: but they are not always 
right in their prognostics ; for Reaumur witnessed a swarm, which after leaving the hive 


at half-past one o’clock were overtaken by avery heavy shower at three. 
* Huber, i. 271. 3 Ibid. i, 305. 4 Ibid. i. 280. 


35* 


A4l4 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


bly direct the bees to this end. There are certain exceptions, produced 
perhaps by artificial or casual occurrences, in which #t seems to deviate, 
yet, as we should call it, amiably, from the rule of the public advantage. 
Retarded queens, which, as I have observed, lay male eggs only, deposit 
them in all cells indifferently, even in royal ones. These last are treated 
by the workers as if they were actually to become queens. Here their 
instinct seems defective :—it appears unaccountable that they should know 
these eggs, as they do when deposited in worker cells, and give them a 
convex covering when about to assume the pupa; unless, perhaps, the size 
of the larva directs them in this case. 

The amputation of one of the antenne of a queen bee appears not to 
affect her perceptibly ; but cutting off both these important organs pro- 
duces a very striking derangement of all her proceedings. She seems in a 
species of delirium, and deprived of all her instincts; every thing is done 
at random; yet the respect and homage of the workers towards her, 
though they are received by her with indifference, continue undiminished. 
If another in the same condition be put in the hive, the bees do not appear 
to discover the difference, and treat them both alike; but if a perfect one 
be introduced, even though fertile, they seize her, keep her in confinement, 
and treat her very unhandsomely. One may conjecture from this circum- 
stance that it is by those wonderful organs, the antenne, that the bees 
know their own queen. If two mutilated queens meet, they show not 
the slightest symptom of resentment. While one of these continues in 
the hive, the workers never think of choosing another; but if she leaves 
it, they do not accompany her, probably because the heat is not increased 
by her putting them into the preparatory agitation.’ 

Iam, &c. 


eee 
1 Huber, i. 316. 


415 


LETTER, XX. 
SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
PERFECT sociETIES—concluded. 


Havine given you a history sufficiently ample of the queen or female bee, 
I shall next add some account of the drone or male bee; but this will not 
detain you long, since “to be born, and die” is nearly the sum total of 
their story. Much abuse, from the earliest times, has been lavished upon 
this description of the inhabitants of the hive, and their indolence and 
gluttony have become proverbial. Indeed, at first sight, it seems extraor- 
dinary that seven or eight hundred individuals should be supported at the 
public expense, and to common appearance do nothing all the while, that 
may be thought to earn their living. But the more we look into nature, 
the more we discover the truth of that common axiom,—that nothing is made 
in vain. Creative Wisdom cannot be caught at fault. Therefore, where 
we do not at present perceive the reason of things, instead of cavilling at 
what we do not understand, we ought to adore in silence, and wait 
patiently till the veil is removed which, in any particular instance, con- 
ceals its final cause from our sight. The mysteries of nature are gradually 
opened to us, one truth making way for the discovery of another: but 
still there will always be in nature, as well as in revelation, even in those 
things that fall under our daily observation, mysteries to exercise our faith 
and humility ; so that we may always reply to the caviller.—< Thine own 
things and those that are grown up with thee hast thou not known; how 
then shall thy vessel comprehend the way of the highest?” 

Various have been the conjectures of naturalists, even in very recent 
times, with respect to the fertilization of the eggs of the bee. Some 
have supposed,—and the number of males seemed to countenance the 
supposition,—that this was effected after they were deposited in the cells. 
Of this opinion Maraldi seems to have been the author ; and it was adopt- 
ed by Mr. Debraw of Cambridge, who asserts that he has seen the smaller 
males (those that are occasionally produced in cells usually appropriated to 
workers) introduce their abdomen into cells containing eggs, and fertilize 
them ; and that the eggs so treated proved fertile, while others that were 
not remained sterile. ‘The common or large drones, which form the bulk — 
of the male population of the hive, could not be generally destined to this 
office, since their abdomen, on account of its size, could only be intro- 
duced into male and royal cells. Bonnet, however, saw some motions of 
one of these drones, which, while it passed by those that were empty, 
appeared to strike with its abdomen the mouth of the cells containing 
eggs.' Swammerdam thought that the female was impregnated by effluvia 
which issued from the male.? Reaumur, from some proceedings that he 


} Bonnet, x. 259. 2 Bibl. Nat. i. 221. 6. ed. Hill. 


416 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


witnessed, was convinced that impregnation took place according to the 
usual Jaw of nature, and, as he supposed, within thethive.t The former 
part of this opinion Huber has confirmed by indubitable proofs; but he 
further discovered that these animals pair abroad, in the air, during the 
flight of the queen: a fact which renders a large number of males neces- 
sary, to insure her impregnation in due time to lay eggs that will produce 
workers.2. Huber also observed those appearances which induced Debraw 
to adopt the opinion I mentioned just now, and was at first disposed to. 
think them real; but afterwards, upon a nearer inspection, he discovered 
that it was an illusion caused by the reflection of the rays of light. 

In fine weather the drones, during the warmest part of the day, take 
their flights; and it is then that they pair with the queen in mid air, the 
result being invariably the death of the drone. No one has yet discovered, 
unless the proceedings observed by Debraw and Bonnet may be so inter- 
preted, that when in the hive they take any share in the business of it, their 
great employment within doors being to eat. ‘Their life, however, is of very 
short duration, the eggs that produce drones being laid in the course of April 
and May, and their destruction being usually accomplished in the months 
of July and August. The bees then, as M. Huber observes, chase them 
about, and pursue them to the bottom of the hives, where they assemble 
in crowds. At the same time numerous carcasses of drones may be seen 
on the ground before the hives. Hence he conjectured, though he never 
could detect them engaged in this work upon the combs, that they were 
stung to death by the workers. To ascertain how their death was 
occasioned, he caused a table to be glazed, on which he placed six hives; 
and under this table he employed the patient and indefatigable Burnens, 
who was to him instead of eyes, to watch their proceedings. On the 4th 
of July this accurate observer saw the massacre going on in all the hives 
at the same time, and attended by the same circumstances. ‘The table 
was crowded with workers, who, apparently in great rage, darted upon the 
drones as soon as they arrived at the bottom of the hive, seizing them by 
their antenna, their legs, and their wings, and killing them by violent 
strokes of their sting, which they generally inserted between the segments 
of the abdomen. The moment this fearful weapon entered their body, 
the poor helpless creatures expanded their wings and expired. After this, 
as if fearful that they were not sufficiently dispatched, the bees repeated 
their strokes, so that they often found it difficult to extricate theirsting. On 
the following day they were equally busy in the work of slaughter; but 
their fury, their own having perished, was chiefly vented upon those drones 
which, after having escaped from the neighboring hives, had sought refuge 
with them. Not content with destroying those that were in the perfect 
state, they attacked also such male pupz as were left in their cells; and 
then dragging them forth, sucked the fluid from their bodies and cast them 
out of the hive.* 

But though in hives containing a queen perfectly fertile (that is, which 
lays both worker and male eggs) this is the unhappy fate of the drones, 
yet in those where the queen only lays male eggs they are suffered to 
remain unmolested ; and in hives deprived of their queen, they also find a 
secure asylum.° 


1 Reaum. v.503—. * Huber, i.24—. Ibid. 37—. ‘Ibid. 195. 5 Ibid. 199. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. ANT 


What it is that, in the former instance, excites the fury of the bees 
against the males, is not easy to discover; but some conjecture may perhaps 
be formed from the circumstance last related. When only males are pro- 
duced by the queen, the bees seem aware that something more is wanted, 
and retain the males ; the same is the case when they have no queen ; and 
when one is procured, they appear to know that she would not profit them 
without the males. ‘Their fury then is connected with their utility : when 
the queen is impregnated, which lasts for her whole life, as if they knew 
that the drones could be of no further use, and would only consume their 
winter stores of provision, they destroy them ; which surely is more mer- 
ciful than expelling them, in which case they must inevitably perish from 
hunger. But when the queen only produces males, their numbers are not 
sufficient to cause alarm ; and the same reasoning applies to the case when 
there is no queen. 


Having brought the males from their cradle to their untimely grave, and 
amused you with the little that is known of their uneventful history, I shall 
now, at last, call you to attend to the proceedings of the workers themselves ; 
and here I am afraid, long as I have detained you, I must still press you to 
expatiate with me in a more ample field ; but the spectacles you will behold 
during our excursion will repay, I promise you, any delay or trouble it 
may occasion. 

When I consider the proceedings of these little creatures, both in the 
hive and out of it, they are so numerous and multifarious that I scarcely 
know where to begin. You have already, however, heard much of their in- 
ternal labors, in the care and nurture of the young ; the construction of their 
combs; and their proceedings with respect to their queens and their para- 
mours. It will therefore change the scene a little, if we accompany them 
in their excursions to collect the various substances of which they have 
need.' On these occasions the principal object of the bees is to furnish 


1 The following beautiful lines by Professor Smyth are extremely applicable to this part. 
of a bee’s labors :— 


“Thou cheerful Bee! come, freely come, 
And travel round my woodbine bower; 
Delight me with thy wandering hum, 
And rouse me from my musing hour, 
Oh! try no more those tedious fields, 
Come taste the sweets my garden yields: 
The treasures of each blooming mine, 
The bud, the blossom,—all are thine. 


“ And, careless of this noontide heat, 
Pll follow as thy ramble guides ; 
To watch thee pause and chafe thy feet, 
And sweep them o’er thy downy sides: 
Then in a flower’s bell nestling lie, 
And all thy envied ardor ply ! 
Then o’er the stem, tho’ fair it grow, 
With touch rejecting, glance, and go. 


“QO Nature kind! O laborer wise! 
That roam’st along the summer’s ray, 
Glean’st every bliss thy life supplies, 
And meet’st prepared thy wintry day! 
Go, envied go—with crowded gates 
The hive thy rich return awaits ; 
Bear home thy store, in triumph gay, 
And shame each idler of the day.” 


‘ 


418 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


themselves with three different materials:—the nectar of flowers, from 
which they elaborate honey and wax ; the pollen or fértilizing dust of the 
anthers, of which they make what is called bee-bread, serving as food both 
to old and young ; and the resinous substance called by the ancients Pro- 
polis, Pissoceros, &c., used in various ways in rendering the hive secure 
and giving the finish to the combs. The first of these substances is the 
pure fluid secreted in the nectaries of flowers, which the length of their 
tongue enables them to reach in most blossoms. ‘The tongue of a bee, 
you are to observe, though so long, and sometimes so inflated’, is not a tube 
through which the honey passes, nor a pump acting by suction, but a real » 
tongue, which laps or licks the honey, and passes it down on its upper sur- 
face, as we do, to the mouth, which is at its base concealed by the man- 
dibles.? It is conveyed by this orifice through the cesophagus into the first 
stomach, which we call the honey-bag, and which, from being very small, 
is swelled when full of it to a considerable size. Honey is never found in 
the second stomach (which is surrounded with muscular rings, and resem- 
bles a cask covered with hoops from one end to the other), but only in the 
first: in the latter and the intestines the bee-bread only is discovered. 
How the wax is secreted, or what vessels are appropriated to that purpose, 
is not yet ascertained. Huber suspects that a cellular substance, consisting 
of hexagons, which lines the membrane of the wax-pockets, may be concern- 
ed in this operation. ‘This substance he also discovered in humble-bees 
(which, though they make wax, have no wax-pockets), occupying all the 
anterior part or base of the segments.° If you wish to see the wax-pockets 
in the hive-bee, you must press the abdomen so as to cause it to extend 
itself; you will then find on each of the four intermediate ventral seg- 
ments, separated by the carina or elevated central part, two trapeziform 
whitish pockets, of a soft membranaceous texture: on these the lamine of 
wax are formed, and they are found upon them in different states, so as to 
be more or less perceptible. I must here observe that, besides ‘Thorley, 
who seems to have been the first apiarist that observed these lamine, Wild- 
man was not ignorant of them, nor of the wax being formed from honey?: 
we must not, therefore, permit foreigners to appropriate to themselves the 
whole credit of discoveries that have been made, or at least partially made, 
by our own countrymen. 

Long before Linné had discovered the nectary of flowers, our industri- 
ous creatures had made themselves intimate with every form and variety 
of them; and no botanist, even in this enlightened era of botanical 
science, can compare with a bee in this respect. The station of these 
reservoirs, even where the armed sight of science cannot discover it, is in 
a moment detected by the microscopic eye of this animal. 

She has to attend to a double task—to collect materials for bee-bread 
as well as for honey and wax. Observe a bee that has alighted upon an 
open flower. The hum produced by the motion of her wings ceases, and 
her employment begins. In an instant she unfolds her tongue, which 
before was rolled up under her head. With what rapidity does she dart 
this organ between the petals and the stamina! At one time she extends 
it to its full length, then she contracts it: she moves it about in all direc- 


? Reaum. v. t. xxviii. f. 1, 2. 2 Ibid. f. 7. 0. 
3 Huber, ii. 5. t. ii. 1. 8. 4 Wildman, 43. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 419 


tions, so that it may be applied both to the concave and convex surface of 
a petal, and wipe them both; and thus by a virtuous theft robs it of all 
its nectar. All the while this is going on, she keeps herself in a constant 
vibratory motion. The object of the industrious animal is not, like the 
more selfish butterfly, to appropriate this treasure to herself. It goes 
into the honey-bag as into a laboratory, where it is transformed into pure 
honey; and when she returns to the hive, she regurgitates it in this form 
into one of the cells appropriated to that purpose; in order that, after 
tribute is paid from it to the queen, it may constitute a supply of food for 
the rest of the community. 

In collecting honey, bees do not solely confine themselves to flowers ; 
they will sometimes very greedily absorb the sweet juices of fruits: this I 
have frequently observed with respect to the raspberries in my garden, 
and have noticed it, as you may recollect, in a former letter. They will 
also eat sugar, and produce wax from it; but, from Huber’s observations, 
it appears not calculated to supply the place of honey in the jelly with 
which the larve are fed.1. Though the great mass of the food of bees is 
collected from flowers, they do not wholly confine themselves to a vegeta- 
ble diet ; for, besides the honeyed secretion of the Aphides, the possession 
of which they will sometimes dispute with the ants®, upon particular 
occasions they will eat the eggs of the queen. They are very fond also of 
the fluid that oozes from the cells of the pupz, and will suck eagerly all 
that is fluid in their abdomen after they are destroyed by their rivals.* 
Several flowers that prodice much honey they pass by ; in some instances, 
from inability to get at it. Thus, for this reason probably, they do not 
attempt those of the trumpet-honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), which, 
if separated from the germen after they are open, will yield two or three 
drops of the purest nectar. So that were this shrub cultivated with that 
view, much honey in its original state might be obtained from a small 
number of plants. In other cases, it appears to be the poisonous quality 
of their honey that induces bees to neglect certain flowers. You have 
doubtless observed the conspicuous white nectaries of the crown imperial 
(Fritillaria imperialis), and that they secrete abundance of this fluid. It 
tempts in vain the passing bee, probably aware of some noxious quality 
that it possesses. The oleander (Nerium Oleander) yields a honey that 
proves fatal to thousands of imprudent flies; but our bees, more wise and 
cautious, avoid it. Occasionally, perhaps, in particular seasons, when 
flowers are less numerous than common, this instinct of the bees appears 
to fail them, or to be overpowered by their desire to collect a sufficient 
store of honey for their purposes, and they suffer for their want of self- 
denial. Sometimes whole swarms have been destroyed by merely alight- 
ing upon poisonous trees. This happened to one in the county of West 
Chester in the province of New York, which settled upon the branches 
of the poison-ash (Rhus vernix). In the following morning the imprudent 
animals were all found dead, and swelled to more than double their usual 
size.t Whether the honey extracted from the species of the genus Kal- 
mia, Andromeda, Rhododendron, &c. be hurtful to the bees themselves, is 
not ascertained ; but, as has been before observed, it is often poisonous to 


1 Huber, ii. 82. ? Abbé Boisier, quoted in Mills On Bees, 24. 
3 Schirach, 45. Huber, i. 179. 4 Nicholson’s Journal, xxiii. 287. 


420 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


man ; and that found at Trebisond on the Euxine coast, as I have formerly 
noticed, threatened fatal effects to such of the Greek army, in the cele- 
brated retreat after the death of the younger Cyrus, as partook of it. 
Pliny, who mentions this honey, calls it Menomenon, and observes that it 
is said to be collected from a kind of Rhododendron, of which ‘Tourne- 
fort noticed two species there. 

When the stomach of a bee is filled with nectar, it next, by means of 
the feathered hairs? with which its body is covered, pilfers from the flowers 
the fertilizing dust of the anthers, the pollen ; which is equally necessary 
to the society with the honey, and may be named the ambrosia of the 
hive, since from it the bee-bread is made. Sometimes a bee is so discol- 
ored with this powder as to look like a different insect, becoming white, 
yellow, or orange, according to the flowers in which it has been busy. 
Reaumur was urged to visit the hives of a gentleman, who on this account 
thought his bees were different from the common kind.? He suspected, 
and it proved, that the circumstance just mentioned occasioned the mis- 
taken notion. When the body of the bee is covered with farina, with the 
brushes of its legs, especially of the hind ones, it wipes it off: not, as we 
do with our dusty clothes, to dissipate and disperse it in the air, but to 
collect every particle of it, and then to knead it and form it into two little 
masses, which she places, one in each, in the baskets formed by hairs* 
on her hind legs. 

Aristotle says that in each journey from the hive, bees attend only one 
species of flower®; Reaumur, however, seems to think that they fly indis- 
criminately from one to another: but Mr. Dobbs, in the Philosophical 
Transactions®, and Butler before him, asserts that he has frequently fol- 
lowed a bee engaged in collecting pollen, &c., and invariably observed 
that it continued collecting from the same kind of flowers with which it 
first began ; passing over every other species, however numerous, even 
though the flower it first selected was scarcer than others. His observa- 
tions, he thinks, are confirmed, and the idea seems not unreasonable, by 
the uniform color of the pellets of pollen, and their different size. Reau- 
mur himself tells us that the bees enter the hive, some with yellow pellets, 
others with red ones, others again with whitish ones, and that sometimes 
they are even green: upon which he observes, that this arises from their 
being collected from particular flowers, the pollen of whose anthers is of 
those colors.’7. Sprengel, as before intimated, has made an observation 
similar to that of Dobbs. It seems not improbable that the reason why 
the bee visits the same species of plants during one excursion may be 
this :—her instinct teaches her that the grains of pollen which enter into 
the same mass should be homogeneous, in order perhaps for their more 
effectual cohesion ; and thus Providence also secures two important ends, 
—the impregnation of those flowers that require such aid, by the bees 
passing from one to another; and the avoiding the production of hybrid 
plants, from the application of the pollen of one kind of plant to the 
stigma of another. When the anthers are not yet burst, the bee opens 
them with her mandibles ; takes a parcel of pollen, which one of the first 
“1 Xenoph. Annabas. 1. iv. Plin. Hist. Nat.l.xxie.13. |. 

® Reaum. v. t. xxvi. f. 1. 3 Reaum. 295. 


4 Kirby, Monogr. Ap. Angl. i. t. 12. **. e. 1. neut. f. 19. a, b. 
5 Hist. Anim. |. ix. c. 40. ® xlvi. 536. 7 Ubi supra, 301. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 421 


pair of legs receives and delivers to the middle pair, from which it passes 
to one of the hind legs. 

If the contents of one of the little pellets be examined under a lens, it 
will be found that the grains have all retained their original shape. A 
botanist practiced in the figure of the pollen of the different species of 
common plants might easily ascertain, by such an examination, whether a 
bee had collected its ambrosia from one or more, and also from what 
species of flowers. 

In the months of April and May, as Reaumur tells us, the bees collect 
pollen from morning to evening; but in the warmer months the great 
gathering of it is from the time of their first leaving~the hive (which is 
sometimes so early as four in the morning) to about 10 o’clock, A. M. 
About that hour all that enter the hive may be seen with their pellets in 
their baskets ; but during the rest of the day the number of those so fur- 
nished is small in comparison of those that are not. In a hive, however, 
in which a swarm is recently established, it is generally. brought in at all 
parts of the day. He supposes, in order for its being formed into pellets, 
that it requires some moisture, which the heat evaporates after the above 
hour; but in the case of recently colonized hives, that the bees go a great: 
way to seek it in moist and shady places.’ 

When a bee has completed her lading, she returns to the hive to dispose 
of it. The honey is disgorged into the honey-pots or cells destined to 
receive it, and is discharged from the honey-bag by its alternate contrac- 
tion and dilatation. A cell will contain the contents of many honey-bags. 
When a bee comes to disgorge the honey, with its fore legs it breaks the 
thick cream that is always on the top, and the. honey which it yields 
passes under it. This cream is honey of a thicker consistence than the 
rest, which rises to the top in the cells like cream on milk: it is not level, 
but forms an oblique surface over the honey. The cells, as you know, 
are usually horizontal, yet the honey does not run cut. The cream, aided 
probably by the general thickness of the honey and the attraction of the 
sides of the cell, prevents this. Bees, when they bring home the honey, 
do not always disgorge it; they sometimes give it to such of their compan- 
ions as have been at work within the hive.? Some of the cells are filled 
with honey for daily use, and some with what is intended for a reserve, 
and stored up against bad weather or a bad season: these are covered 
with a waxen lid.? 

The pollen is employed as circumstances direct. When the bee laden 
with it arrives at the hive, she sometimes stops at the entrance, and very 
leisurely detaching it by piecemeal, devours one or both the pellets on her 
legs, chewing them with her jaws, and passing them then down the little 
orifice before noticed. Sometimes she enters the hive, and walks upon 
the combs; and, whether she walks or stands, still keeps beating her 
wings. By the noise thus produced, which seems a call to some of her 
fellow-citizens, three or four go to her, and placing themselves around her, 
begin to lighten her of her load, each taking and devouring a small por- 


! Reaum. v. 302.—comp. 433. I have seen bees out before it was light. 

2 Huber observes that the honey for store is collected by the wax-making bees only 
(abeilles ciriéres), and that the nurses (abeilles nourrices) gather no more than what is wanted 
for themselves and companions at work in the hive. (ii. 66.) 

3 Reaum. v. 448. 

36 


422 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 


tion of her ambrosia; this they repeat, if more do not arrive to assist 
them, three or four times, till the whole is disposed of Wildman observed 
them on this occasion supporting themselves upon their two fore feet ; 
and making several motions with their wings and body to the right and 
left, which produced the sound that summoned their assistants.* This 
bee-bread, as I said before, is generally found in the second stomach and 
intestines, but the honey never; which induced Reaumur to think (but 
he was mistaken) that the bees elaborated wax from it: and he observes, 
that the bees devour this when they are busily engaged in constructing 
combs.? When more pollen is collected than the bees have immediate 
occasion for, they store it up in some of the empty cells. ‘The laden bee 
puts her two hind legs into the cell, and with the intermediate pair pushes 
off the pellets. When this is done, she; or another bee if she is too much 
fatigued with her day’s labor, enters the cell with her head first, and 
remains there some time: she is engaged in diluting the pellets, kneading 
them, and packing them close ; and so they proceed till the cell is filled.* 
A large portion of the cells of some combs are filled with this bread, 
which one while is found in insulated cells, at another in cells amongst 
those that are filled with honey or brood. ‘Thus it is everywhere at 
hand for use.° 

You have seen how the bees collect and employ two of the materials 
that I mentioned; I must now advert to the third—the Propolis. 
Huber was a long time uncertain from whence the bees procured this 
gummy resin; but it at last occurred to him to plant some cuttings of a 
species of poplar (before their leaves were developed, when their leaf- 
buds were swelling, and besmeared and filled with a viscid juice) in some 
pots, which he placed in the way of the bees that went from his hives. 
Almost immediately a bee alighted upon a twig, and soon with its mandi- 
bles opened a bud, and drew from it a thread of the viscid matter which 
it contained ; with one of its second pair of legs it took it from the mouth, 
and placed it in the basket: thus it proceeded till it had given them both 
their load.© I have myself seen bees very busy collecting it from the 
Tacamahaca (Populus balsamifera). But this is an old discovery, con- 
firmed by recent observation ; for Mouffet tells us, from Cordus, that it is 
collected from the gems of trees, instancing the poplar and the birch.? 
Riem observes that it is also collected from the pine and fir. The pro- 
polis is soft, red, will pull out in a thread, is aromatic, and imparts a gold 
color to white polished metals. It is employed in the hive not only in 
finishing the combs, as I related in my letter on Habitations ; but also in 
stopping every chink or orifice by which cold, wet, or any enemy, can 
enter. ‘They cover likewise with it the sticks which support the combs, 
and often spread it over a considerable portion of the interior of the hive. 
Like the pellets of pollen, it is carried on the posterior tibia, but the 
masses are lenticular.® 

Mr. Knight mentions an instance of bees using an artificial kind of pro- 
polis. He had caused the decorticated part of some tree to be covered 


’ Reaum. v, 418, 2 Ibid. v. p. 38. 3 Ubi supra, 419. 

* Compare Reaum. 420., and Huber, ii. 24., with Wildman, 40. 

® For much valuable information on the economy of bees, the reader will do well to con- 
sult Dr. Bevan’s very interesting work on the Honey Bee. 

® Huber, ii. 260. 7 Insect. Theatr. 36. Schirach, 241. ® Reaum, udi supra, 437. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 423 


with a cement composed of bees’ wax and turpentine; finding this to 
their purpose, they attacked it, detaching it from the tree by their mandi- 
bles, and then, as usual, passing it from the first leg to the second, and so 
to the third. When one bee had thus collected its load, another often 
came behind and despoiled it of all it had collected ; a second and third 
load were frequently lost in the same manner ; and yet the patient animal 
pursued its Jabors without showing any signs of anger." - 

Bees in their excursions do not confine themselves to the spot imme- 
diately contiguous to their dwelling, but, when led by the scent of honey, 
will goa mile from it. Huber even assigns to them a radius of half a 
league round their hive for their ordinary excursions ; yet from this dis- 
tance they will discover honey with as much certainty as if it was within 
their sight. To prove that it is by their scent that bees find it out, he 
put some behind a window-shutter, in a place where it could not be seen, 
leaving the shutter just open enough for insects, if they liked, to get at it. 
Tn less than a quarter of an hour four bees, a butterfly, and some house- 
flies had discovered it. At another time he put some into boxes, with 
little apertures in the lid, into which pieces of card were fitted, which 
he placed about two hundred paces from his hives. In about half an 
hour the bees discoyered them, and traversing them very industriously, 
soon found the apertures, when, pushing in the pieces of card, they got to 
the honey. That contained in the blossom of many plants is quite 
as much concealed, yet the acuteness of their scent enables them to 
detect it. — 

These insects, especially when laden and returning to their nest, fly in 
a direct line, which saves both time and labor. How they are enabled 
to do this with such certainty as to make for their own abode without 
deviation, I must leave to others to explain. Connected with this circum- 
stance, and the acuteness of their smell, is the following curious account, 
given in the Philosophical Transactions for 1721, of the method practiced 
in New England for discovering where the wild hive-bees live in the 
woods, in order to get their honey. The honey-hunters set a plate con- 
taining honey or sugar upon the ground in aclear day. ‘The bees soon 
discover and attack it: having secured two or three that have filled them- 
selves, the hunter lets one go, which, rising into the air, flies straight to 
the nest: he then strikes off at right angles with its course a few hundred 
yards, and letting a second fly, observes its course by his pocket-compass, 
and the point where the two courses intersect is that where the nest is 
situated.” 

The natural station of bees is in the cavities of decayed trees ; such 
trees, Mr. Knight tells us, they will discover in the closest recesses, and 
at an extraordinary distance from the hive ; in one instance it was a mile: 
and at swarming, they sometimes are inclined to settle in such cavities. 
After the discovery of one, from twenty to fifty, who are a kind of scouts, 
may be found examining and keeping possession of it. ‘They seem to 
explore every part of it and of the tree with the greatest attention, even 
surveying the dead knots and the like? When a hive stands unemployed, 
a swarm will also sometimes send scouts to take possession of it. 


1 Philos. Trans. 1807, 242. 2 xxxi. 148. 
3 Knight in Philos. Trans. for 1807, 237. Marshall, Agricult. of Norfolk. 


424 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


How long our little active creatures repose before they take a second 
excursion I cannot precisely say. In a hive the greatest part of the 
inhabitants generally appear in repose, lying together, says Reaumur, but 
this probably for a short time. Huber tells us, that bees may always be 
observed in a hive with the head and thorax inserted into cells that con- 
tain eggs, and sometimes into empty ones; and that they remain in this 
situation fifteen or twenty minutes, so motionless that, did not the dilata- 
tion of the segments of the abdomen prove the contrary, they might be 
mistaken for dead. He supposes their object is to repose from their 
Jabors.! The queen, for this purpose, enters the large cells of the males, 
and continues in them without motion a very long time. Even then the 
workers form a circle round her, and brush the uncovered part of her 
abdomen. ‘The drones while reposing do not enter the cells, but cluster 
in the combs, and sometimes remain without stirring a limb for eighteen 
or twenty hours.” 

Reaumur observes, that in a hive the population of which amounts to 
18,000, the number that enter the hive in a minute is a hundred; which, 
allowing fourteen hours in the day for their labor, makes 84,000: thus 
every individual must make four excursions daily, and some five. In 
hives where the population was smaller, the numbers that entered were 
comparatively greater, so as to give six excursions or more to each bee.? 
But in this calculation Reaumur does not seem to take into the account 
those that are employed within the hive in building or feeding the young 
brood ; which must render the excursions of each bee still more numerous. 
He proceeds further to ground upon this statement a calculation of the 
quantity of bee-bread that may be collected in one day by such a hive ; 
and he found, supposing only half the number to collect it, that it would 
amount to more than a pound ; so that in one season one such hive might 
collect a hundred pounds.4| What a wonderful idea does this give of the 
industry and activity of these little useful creatures! And what a lesson 
do they read to the members of societies that have both reason and 
religion to guide their exertions for the common good! Adorable is that 
Great Being who has gifted them with instincts which render them as 
instructive to us, if we will condescend to listen to them, as they are pro- 
fitable. 

While I am upon this part of the story of bees, I cannot pass over the 
account Reaumur has given from Maillet of the transportation of hives 
in Egypt from one place to another, before alluded to®, to enable them to 
make in greater abundance their collections of honey, &c. Towards the 
end of October, when the inundations of the Nile have ceased, and 


1 It has been supposed and the supposition was adopted originally in this work (Vol. I. 
lst ed. p. 371.), that the object in this case is brooding the eggs; but upon further con- 
sideration we incline to Huber’s opinion, that it has noconnection with it, the ordinary tem- 
perature of the hive being sufficient for this purpose ; and the circumstance of their enter- 
ing unoccupied cells proves that this attitude has no particular connection with the eggs. 
( Huber, i. 212.) “ When large pieces of comb,” says Wildman (p. 45.), “ were broken off 
and left at the bottom of the hive, a great number of bees have gone and placed themselves 
upon them.” This looks like incubation. Reaumur, however, affirms (p. 591.) that if 
part of a comb falls and loses its perpendicular direction, the bees, as if conscious that they 
would come to nothing, pull out and destroy all the larve. They might perhaps remain 
perpendicular in the case observed by Wildman. 

? Reaum. v. 431. Huber, ii. 212. 3 Reaum. v. 432. 

4 Reaum. v. 434. 5 Reaum. vy. 698. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 425 


the husbandmen can sow their land, saintfoin is one of the first things 
that is sown; and as Upper Egypt is warmer than the Lower, the saint- 
foin gets there first into blossom. At this time, bee-hives are transported 
in boats from all parts of Egypt into the upper district, and are there 
heaped in pyramids upon the boats prepared to receive them; each being 
numbered by the individual to whom it belongs. In this station the 
remain some days: and when they are judged to have got in the harvest of 
honey and pollen that is to be collected there, they are removed two or 
three leagues lower down, where they remain the same time; and so . 
they proceed till towards the middle of February, when, having tra- 
versed Egypt, they arrive at the sea, from whence they are dispersed to 
their several owners. 

A transportation of bee-hives, in some respects similar, prevails, as we 
learn from Mr. Willock, at the present day throughout Persia, Asia 
Minor, and he believes Greece; in which countries an inhabitant even of 
a town will sometimes possess fifty or sixty hives, from the honey and 
wax of which a considerable profit is derived. ‘These hives are wicker- 
work cylinders, two feet eight inches long by nine inches in diameter, 
plastered inside and outside with cow-dung; having one end filled up with 
a circular earthenware plate, and the other with a circular wooden 
door, in the middle of which is a small hole for the entrance of 
the bees. In spring, when the herbage of the low country has become 
parched, the proprietor of the hives, after closing them, conveys them 
(six or seven being an ass load) to some village in the neighboring moun- 
tains where fragrant shrubs abound; and having sealed the doors, leaves 
them in charge of a villager, whom he pays for watching them when he 
removes them in October back to his home. Near villages in the moun- 
tains of Sahund, in the vicinity of Tabreez, Mr. Willock has seen ranges 
of these hives thus put out to doard to the number of 500 or 600." 

Jobn Hunter observes, that when the season for laying is over, that 
for collecting honey comes on (he means, probably, for making the prin- 
cipal collection of it); and that when the last pupa is disclosed, the cell 
it deserts, after being cleaned, is immediately filled with it, and as soon as 
full is covered with pure wax: but this only holds with respect to the 
cells containing honey for winter use, those destined to receive that which 
forms their food when bad weather prevents them from going out being 
left open.? Sometimes, when the year is remarkably favorable for collect- 
ing honey, the bees will destroy many of the larve to make room for it; 
but they never meddle with the pupe. ~ When no more honey is to be 
collected, they remain quiet in the hive for the winter. Mr. Hunter found 
that a hive grew lighter in a cold than in a warm week; he found also 
that in three months (from November 10th to February 9th) a single hive 
lost 72 oz. 13 dram.® 

Water is a thing of the first necessity to these insects ; but they are not 
very delicate as to its quality, but rather the reverse; often preferring 
what is stagnant and putrescent to that of a running stream.* I have 
frequently observed them busy in corners moist with urine; perhaps this 
is for the sake of the saline particles to be there collected. 


1 Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, p. 84. 
2 Philos. Trans. 1792, 160. Comp. Reaum. v. 450, 
° Reaum, ibid. 591. Hunter, ibid. 161. * Reaum, did. 697. 


36* 


426 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


A new-born bee, as soon as it is able to use its wipgs, seems _ perfectly 
aware, without any previous instruction, what are to be its duties and 
employments for the rest of its life. It appears to know that it is born for 
society, and not for selfish pursuits; and therefore it invariably devotes 
itself and its labors to the benefit of the community to which it belongs. 
Walking upon the combs, it seeks for the door of the hive, that it may 
sally forth and be useful. Full of life and activity, it then takes its 
first fight; and, unconducted but by its instinct, visits like the rest the 
subjects of Flora, absorbs their nectar, covers itself with their ambrosial 
dust, which it kneads into a mass and packs upon its hind legs; and, if 
need be, gathers propolis, and returns unembarrassed to its own hive." 

Instances of the expedition with which our little favorites accomplish 
their various objects you have had several ; but this is never more remarka- 
ble than when they settle in a new hive. At this time, in twenty-four 
hours they will sometimes construct a comb twenty inches long by seven 
or eight wide; and the hive will be half filled in five or six days; 
so that in the first fifteen days as much wax is made as in the whole year 
besides.” 

In treating of the various employments of the bees, I must not omit 
one of the greatest importance to them—the ventilation of their abode. 
When you consider the numbers contained in ‘so confined a space, the 
high temperature to which its atmosphere is raised, and the small aperture 
at which the air principally enters, you will readily conceive how soon 
it must be rendered unfit for respiration, and be convinced that there 
must be some means of constantly renewing it. If you feel disposed to 
think that the ventilation takes place, as in our apartments, by natural 
means, resulting from the rarefaction of the air by the heat of the hive, 
and the consequent establishment of an interior and exterior current, a 
simple experiment will satisfy you that this cannot be. Take a vessel of 
the size of a bee-hive, with a similar or even somewhat larger aperture ; 
introduce a lighted taper, and if the temperature be raised to more than 
140°, it will go out in a short time. We must therefore admit, as Huber 
observes*, that the bees possess the astonishing faculty of attracting the 
external air, and at the same time of expelling that which has become 
corrupted by their respiration. 

What would you say, should I tell you that the bees upon this occasion 
have recourse to the same instrument which Jadies use to cool themselves 
when an apartment is overheated? Yet it is strictly the case. By 
means of their marginal hooks, they unite each pair of wings into one 
plane slightly concave, thus acting upon the air by a surface nearly as 
large as possible, and forming for them a pair of very ample fans, which 
in their vibrations describe an arch of 90°. These vibrations are so rapid 
as to render the wings almost invisible. When they are engaged in ven- 
tilation, the bees by means of their feet and claws fix themselves as firmly 
as possible to the place they stand upon, The first pair of legs is stretched 
out before ; the second extended to the right and left; whilst the third, 
placed very near each other, are perpendicular to the abdomen, so as to 
give that part considerable elevation. 

Marialdi, and after him Reaumur, long ago noticed this action of the 


1 Reaum. v. 602, _ * Ibid, 656. 3 ji. 339. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 427 


bees ; but they attributed to it an effect the reverse of that which it really 
produces ; the former imagining it to occasion directly the high tempera- 
ture of the hive, and the latter indirectly.1 It was reserved for Huber to 
discover the true cause of it; and from him the chief of what I have to 
say upon the subject will be derived.” 

During the summer a certain number of workers—for it is to the work- 
ers solely that this office is committed—may always be observed vibrating 
their wings’ before the entrance of their hive; and the observant apiarist 
will find, upon examination, that a still greater number are engaged 
within it in the same employment. All those thus circumstanced that 
stand without turn their head to the entrance; while those that stand 
within turn their back to it. ‘The station of these ventilators is upon the 
floor of the hive. They are usually ranged in files that terminate at the 
entrance ; and sometimes, but not constantly, form so many diverging 
rays, probably to give room for comers and goers to pass. The number 
of ventilators in action at the same time varies: it seldom much exceeds 
twenty, and is often more circumscribed. The time also that they devote 
to this function is longer or shorter, according to circumstances: some 
have been observed to continue their vibrations for nearly half an hour 
without resting, suspending the action for not more than an instant, as it 
should seem to take breath. When one retires, another occupies its place ; ; 
so that in a hive well peopled there is never any interruption of the sound 
or humming occasioned by this action, by which it may always be known 
whether it be going on or not. 

This humming i is observable not only during the heats of summer, but 
at all seasons of the year. It sometimes seems even more forcible in the 
depth of winter than when the temperature of the atmosphere is higher. 
An employment so constant, which always occupies a certain number of 
bees, must preduce as constant an effect. ‘The column of air once dis- 
turbed within must give place to that without the hive; thus a current 
being established, the ventilation will be perpetual and complete. 

To be convinced that such an effect is produced, approach your hand 
to a ventilating bee, and you will find that she causes a very perceptible 
motion in the air. Huber tried an experiment still more satisfactory. On 
a calm day, at the time when the bees had returned to their habitation— 
having fixed a screen before the mouth of the hive to prevent his being 
misled by any sudden motion of the external air—he placed within the 
screen little anemometers or wind-gauges, made of bits of paper, feather, 
or cotton, suspended by a thread to a crotch. No sooner did they enter 
the atmosphere of the bees than they were put in motion, being alternately 
attracted and repelled to and from the aperture of the hive with considerable 
rapidity. ‘These attractions and repulsions were proportioned to the number 
of bees engaged in ventilation, and though sometimes less perceptible, were 
never entirely suspended. Burnens tried a similar experiment in the win- 
ter, when the thermometer stood in the shade at 33°. Having selected a 
well-peopled hive, the inhabitants of which appeared full of life and suf- 
ficiently active in the interior, and luted it all round, except the aperture, 
to the platform on which it stood, he stuck in the top a piece of iron wire 


} Reaum. v. 672, 2 Huber, ii, 338—362. 


428 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


which terminatéd in a hook, to which he fastened g hair with a small 
square of very thin paper at the other end; this was exactly opposite to 
the aperture, at the distance of about an inch from it. As soon as the 
apparatus was fixed, the hair with its paper pendulum began to oscillate 
more or less, the greatest oscillations on both sides being an inch, by ad- 
measurement, from the perpendicular; if the paper was moved by force 
to a greater distance, the vibrations did not take place, and the apparatus 
remained at rest. He then made an opening in the top of the hive, and 
poured in some liquid honey ; soon after there arose a hum, the movement 
in the interior increased, and some beescame out. ‘The oscillations of the 
pendulum upon this became more frequent and intense, and extended to 
fifteen lines or an inch and a quarter from the perpendicular; but when 
the paper was removed to a greater distance from the aperture, it remained 
at rest. 

Huber, at the proposal of M. de Saussure, in order to ascertain whether 
artificial ventilators would produce an analogous effect, got a mechanical 
friend to construct for him a little mill with eighteen sails of tin. He also 
prepared a large cylindrical vase, into which he could, at an aperture in 
the box upon which it was fixed, introduce a lighted taper. In one side 
of this box was another aperture to represent that of a hive, but larger. 
The ventilator was placed below, and luted at the points of contact, and 
anemometers were suspended before the aperture. The first experiment 
was the introduction of the taper, without putting the ventilator in motion. 
Though the capacity of the vessel was about 3228 cubic inches, the fame 
soon diminished, and went out in about eight minutes, and the anemome- 
ters continued motionless. 'The same experiment was next repeated with 
the door shut, with precisely the same result. After the air of the vessel 
had been renewed, the taper was again introduced, and the ventilator set 
in motion: immediately, as appeared by the oscillations of the anemome- 
ters, two currents of air were established, and the brilliancy of the flame 
was not diminished during the whole course of the experiment, which 
might have been prolonged for an indefinite time. A thermometer placed 
in the lower part of the apparatus rose to 112°; and the temperature was 
evidently still more elevated at the top of the receiver. 

The Creator often has one end in view in the actions of animals (and 
nothing more conspicuously displays the invisible hand that governs the 
universe), while the agents themselves have another. This probably is 
the case in the present instance, since we can scarcely suppose that the 
bees beat the air with their wings in order to ventilate the hive, but rather 
to relieve themselves from some disagreeable sensation which oppresses 
them. The following experiments prove that one of their objects in this 
action, as it is with ladies when they use their fans, is to cool themselves 
when they suffer from too great heat. When Huber once opened the 
shutter of a glazed hive, so that the solar rays darted upon the combs 
covered with bees, a humming, the sign of ventilation, soon was heard 
amongst them, while those which were in the shade remained tranquil. 
The bees composing the clusters which often are suspended from the hives 
in summer, when they are incommoded by the heat of the sun, fan them- 
selves with great energy. But if by any means a shadow is cast over 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 429 


any portion of the group, the ventilation ceases there, while it continues 
in the part which feels the heat of the sun. The same cause produces a 
similar effect upon humble-bees, wasps, and hornets. 

Amongst the bees, however, it is remarkable that ventilation goes on 
even in the depth of winter, when it cannot be occasioned by excess of 
heat. This, therefore, can only be regarded as a secondary cause of the 
phenomenon. From other experiments, which, having already detained 
you too long, I shall not here detail, it appears that penetrating and disa- 
greeable odors produce the same effect.! Perhaps, though Huber does 
not say this, the odor produced by the congregated myriads of the hive 
may be amongst the principal motives that impel its inhabitants to this 
necessary action. 

Whatever be the proximate cause, it is, I trust, now evident to you 
that the Author of nature, having assigned to these ‘insects a habitation 
into which the air cannot easily penetrate, has gifted them with the means 
of preventing the fatal effects which would result from corrupted air. An 
indirect effect of ventilation is the elevated temperature which these 
animals maintain, without any effort, in their hive :—but upon this I shall 
enlarge hereafter. 

Bees are extremely neat in their persons and habitations, and remove 
all nuisances with great assiduity, at least as far as their powers enable 
them. Sometimes slugs or snails will creep into a hive, which with all 
their address they cannot readily expel or carry out. But here their 
instinct is at no loss; for they kill them, and afterwards embalm them with 
propolis, so as to prevent any offensive odors from incommoding them. 
An unhappy snail, that had traveled up the sides of a glazed hive, and 
which they could not come at with their stings, they fixed, a monument of 
their vengeance and dexterity, by laying this substance all around the 
mouth of its shell.2 When they expel their excrements they go apart, 
that they may not defile their companions ; and in winter, when prevented 
by extreme cold, or the injudicious practice of wholly closing the door of 
the hive, from going out for this purpose, their bodies sometimes become 
so swelled from the accumulation of feces in the intestines, that when at 
last able to get out they can no longer fly, so that falling to the ground in 
the attempt, they perish with cold, the sacrifice of personal neatness.° 
When a bee is disclosed from the pupa and has left its cell, a worker comes, 
and taking out its envelop carries it from the hive; another removes the 
exuvie of the larva; and a third any filth or ordure that may remain, or 
any pieces of wax that may have fallen in when the nascent imago broke 
from its confinement. But they never attempt to remove the internal 
lining of silk that covers the walls, spun by the larva previous to its meta- 


morphosis ; because, instead of being a nuisance, it renders the cell more 
solid.* 


Having now described to you the usual employments of my little favor- 
ites both within doors and without, I shall next enlarge a little upon their 
language, memory, tempers, manners, and some other parts of their 
history. 


1 Huber, ii. 359. 2 Reaum. v. 442. 3 Bonner On Bees, 102. 
4 Reaum. udi supr. 580—600. 


‘ 


430 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


«« Brutes ” (it is the remark of Mr. Knight) “have language to express 
sentiments of love, of fear, of anger; but they seem "unable to transmit 
any impression they have received from external objects. But the lan- 
guage of bees is more extensive; if not a language of ideas, it is some- 
thing very similar.” You have seen above that the organ of the language 
of ants is their antenne. Huber has proved satisfactorily that these parts 
have the same use with the bees. He wished to ascertain whether, when 
they had lost a queen (intelligence which traverses a whole hive in about 
an hour) they discovered the sad event by their smell, their touch, or any 
unknown cause. He first divided a hive by a grate, which kept the two 
portions about three or four lines apart; so that they could not come at 
each other, though scent would pass. In that part in which there was no 
queen, the bees were soon in great agitation; and as they did not discover 
her where she was confined, in a short time they began to construct royal 
cells, which quieted them. He next separated them by a partition through 
which they could pass their antenne, but not their heads. In this case 
the bees all remained tranquil, neither intermitting the care of the brood, 
nor abandoning their other employments; nor did they begin any royal 
cell. The means they used to assure themselves that their queen was in 
their vicinity, and to communicate with her, was to pass their antenne 
through the openings of the grate. An infinite number of these organs 
might be seen at once, as it were inquiring in all directions; and the queen 
was observed answering these anxious inquiries of her subjects in the most 
marked manner ; for she was always fastened by her feet to the grate, 
crossing her antenne with those of the inquirers. Various other experi- 
ments, which are too long to relate, prove the importance of these organs 
as the instruments of communicating with each other, as well as to direct 
the bee in all its proceedings.” Besides their antennez, the bees also 
cause themselves to be understood by certain sounds, not indeed produced 
by the mouth, but by other parts of their body :—but upon this subject I 
shall have occasion to enlarge hereafter. 

That bees can remember agreeable sensations at least, is evident from 
the following anecdote related by Huber.—One autumn some honey was 
placed upon a window—the bees attended it in crowds. The honey was 
taken away, and the window closed with a shutter all the winter. In the 
spring, when it was reopened, the bees returned, though no fresh honey 
had been placed there.® . 

From the earliest times our little citizens of the hive have had the 
character of being an irritable race. Their anger is without bounds, says 
Virgil ; andif they are molested, this character is no exaggeration. Some 
individuals, however, they will suffer to go near their hives, and to do almost 
any thing; and there are others to whom they seem to take such an 
antipathy, that they will attack them unprovoked. A great deal will 
probably depend upon this—whether any thing has happened to put them 
out of humor. The bees usually do not attack me; but I remember one 
day last year, when the asparagus was in blossom, which a large number 
were attending, I happened to go between my asparagus beds; which 
discomposed them so much, that I was obliged to retreat with hasty steps, 
and some of them flew after me: I escaped, however, unstung. Thorley 


1 In Philos. Trans. 1807, 239. ? Huber, ii. 407. 3 Ibid. 375. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 431 


relates an anecdote of a gentleman, who, desirous of securing a swarm of 
bees that had settled in a hollow tree, rashly undertook to dislodge them. 
He succeeded ; but though he had used the precaution of securing his 
head and hands, he was so stung by the furious animals that a violent 
fever was the consequence, and his recovery was for some time doubtful. 
The strength of his constitution at length prevailed; and the hole of the 
tree being stopped, the survivors of the battle settled upon a branch, were 
hived, and became the dear-bought property of their conqueror." 

In Mungo Park’s last mission to Africa, he was much annoyed by the 
attack of bees, probably of the same tribe with our hive-bee. His people, 
in search of honey, disturbed a large colony of them. ‘The bees sallied 
forth by myriads, and attacking men and beasts indiscriminately put them 
all to the rout. One horse and six asses were either killed or missing in 
consequence of their attack; and for half an hour the bees seemed to 
have completely put an end to their journey. Isaaco upon another 
occasion lost one of his asses, and one of his men was almost killed by 
them.” 

Bees, however, if they are not molested, are not usually ill-tempered : 
if you make a captive of their queen, they will cluster upon your head, 
or any other part of your body, and never attempt to sting you. I 
remember, when a boy, seeing the celebrated Wildman exhibit many feats 
of this kind, to the great astonishment and apprehension of the uninformed 
spectators. The writer lately quoted (Thorley) was assisted once by his 
maid-servant to hive a swarm. Being-rather afraid, she put a linen cloth 
as a defence over her head and shoulders. When the bees were shaken 
from the tree on which they had alighted, the queen probably settled 
upon this cloth; for the whole swarm covered it, and then, getting under 
it, spread themselves over her face, neck, and bosom, so that when the 
cloth was removed she was quite a spectacle. She was with great diffi- 
culty kept from running off with all the bees upon her; but at length her 
master quieted her fears, and began to search for the queen. He suc- 
ceeded, and hoped when he put her into the hive that the bees would 
follow ; but they only seemed to cluster more closely. Upon a second 
search he found another queen (unless the same had escaped and returned), 
whom seizing, he placed in the hive. The bees soon missed her, and 
crowded after her into it: so that in the space of two or three minutes 
not one was left upon the poor terrified girl. After this escape, she 
became quite a heroine, and would undertake the most hazardous employ- 
ments about the hives.® 

Many means have been had recourse to for the dispersion of mobs and 
the allaying of popular tumults. In St. Petersburgh (so travelers say) a 
fire-engine playing upon them does not always cool their choler; but 
were a few hives of bees thus employed, their discomfiture would be 
certain. ‘The experiment has been tried. Lesser tells us, that in 1525, 
during the confusion occasioned by a time of war, a mob of peasants 
assembling in Hohnstein (in Thuringia) attempted to pillage the house of 
the minister of Elende ; who having in vain employed all his eloquence 


! Thorley, 16. The Psalmist alludes to the fury of these creatures, when he says of his 
enemies, ‘“ They compassed me about like bees.’’ (Ps. exviii. 12.) 
* Park’s Last Mission, 153. 297. Comp. Journal, 331. 3 Thorley, 150. 


432 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


to dissuade them from their design, ordered his domestics to fetch his bee- 
hives, and throw them in the middle of this furious mob. The effect was 
what might be expected; they were immediately put to flight, and happy 
if they escaped unstung.? . 

The anger of bees is not confined to man; it is not seldom excited 
against their own species. From what I have said above respecting the 
black bees* and their fate, it seems not improbable that, when the workers 
become too old to be useful to the community, they are either killed, or 
expelled the society. Reaumur, who observed that the inhabitants of the 
same hive had often mortal combats, was of opinion that this was their 
object in these battles*, which take place, he observes, in fine or warm 
weather. On these occasions the bees are sometimes so eager, that 
examining them with a lens does not part them :—their whole object is to 
pierce each other with their sting, the stroke of which, if once it pene- 
trates to the muscles, is mortal. In these engagements the conqueror is 
not always able to extricate this weapon, and then both perish. The 
duration of the conflict is uncertain; sometimes it Jasts an hour, and at 
others is very soon determined: and occasionally it happens that both 
parties, fatigued and despairing of victory, give up the contest and fly 
away. 

But the wars of bees are not confined to single combats; general actions 
now and then take place between two swarms. This happens when one takes 
a fancy to a hive that another has preoccupied. In fine warm weather, 
strangers that wish to be received amongst them meet with but an indif- 
ferent welcome, and a bloody battle is the consequence. Reaumur wit- 
nessed one that lasted a whole afternoon, in which many victims fell. In 
this case the battle is still between individuals, who at one time decide 
the business within the hive, and at another at some distance without. In 
the former case the victorious bee flies away, bearing her victim under 
her body between her legs, sometimes taking a longer and sometimes a 
shorter flight before she deposits it upon the ground. She then takes her 
repose near the dead body, standing upon her four anterior legs, and rub- 
bing the two hinder ones against each other. If the battle is not con- 
cluded within the hive, the enemy is carried to a little distance, and then 
dispatched. 

This strange fury, however, does not always show itself on this occa- 
sion ; for now and then some friendly intercourse seems to take place. 
Bees from a hive in Mr. Knight’s garden visited those in that of a cottager 
a hundred yards distant, considerably later than their usual time of labor, 
every bee as it arrived appearing to be questioned. On the tenth morn- 
ing, however, the intercourse ceased, ending in a furious battle. On 
another occasion, an intimacy took place between two hives of his own, 
at twice the distance, which ceased on the fifth day. Sometimes he 
observed that this communication terminated in the union of two swarms: 
as in one instance, where a swarm had taken possession of a hollow tree’, 
it is probable that the reception of one swarm by another may depend 
upon their numbers, and the fitness of their station to accommodate them. 
Thorley witnessed a battle of more than two days’ continuance, occasioned 


1 Lesser, |. ii. 171. * See above, p. 394, 3 Reaum. v. 360—365. 
* Philos. Trans. 1807, 234. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 433 


by a strange swarm forcing their way into a hive.t Two swarms that 
rise at the same time sometimes fight till great numbers have been destroy- 
ed, or one of the queens slain, when both sides cease all their enmity and 
unite under the survivor.? 

These apiarian battles are often fought in defence of the property of 
the hive. Bees that are ill managed, and not properly fed, instead of 
collecting for themselves, will now and then get a habit of pillaging from 
their more industrious neighbors: these are called by Schirach corsair 
bees, and by English writers robbers. ‘They make their attack chiefly in 
the latter end of July, and during the month of August. At first they 
act with caution, endeavoring to enter by stealth ; and then, emboldened by 
success, come in a body. If one of the queens be killed, the attacked 
bees unite with the assailants, take up their abode with them, and assist in 
plundering their late habitation. ‘ Schirach very gravely recommends it 
to aplarists whose hives are attacked by these depredators, to give the 
bees some honey mixed with brandy or wine, to increase and inflame their 
courage, that they may more resolutely defend their property against their 
piratical assailants.* It is, however, to be apprehended that this method 
of making them pot-valiant might induce them to attack their neighbors 
as well as to defend themselves. 

Sometimes combats take place in which three or four bees attack a 
single individual, not with a design to kill, but merely to rob: one seizes 
it by one leg, another by another; till perhaps there are two on each 
side, each having hold of a leg; or they bite its head or thorax. But as 
soon as the poor animal that is thus hauled about and maltreated unfolds 
its tongue, one of the assailants goes and sucks it with its own, and is 
followed by the rest, who then let it go. ‘These insects, however, in 
their ordinary labors are very kind and helpful to each other; I have 
often seen two, at the same moment, visit the same flower, and very 
peaceably despoil it of its treasures, without any contention for the best 
share. 

As the poison of bees exhales a penetrating odor, M. Huber was 
curious to observe the effect it might produce upon them. Having ex- 
tracted with pincers the sting of a bee and its appendages impregnated 

1 Philos. Trans. 1807, 166. 

® Thorley, ibid. Comp. Mills On Bees, 63.—The following account of an apiarian battle 
was copied from the Carlisle Patriot Newspaper :—On Saturday Jast, in the village of Cargo, 
a combat of a truly novel description was witnessed. A hive of bees belonging to a pro- 
fessional gentleman of this city swarmed on Thursday last; after which they were hived in 
the regular way, and appeared to be doing well. On the Saturday after, a swarm of bees, 
from some neighboring hive, appeared to be flying over the garden in which the hive above 
mentioned was placed, when they instantly darted down upon the hive of the new settlers, 
and completely covered it: in a little time they began to enter the hive, and poured into it 
in such numbers that it soon became completely filled. A loud humming noise was heard, 
and the work of destruction immediately ensued ; the winged combatants sallied forth from 
the hive, until it became entirely empty ; and a furious battle commenced in “ upper air,” 
between the beseigers and the beseiged. A spectator informs us, that these intrepid little 
warriors were so numerous, that they literally darkened the sky over-head like a cloud; 
meanwhile the destructive battle raged with fury on both sides, and the ground beneath was 
covered with the wounded and the slain: hundreds of them were lying dead, or crawling 
about, disabled from reascending to the scene of action. To one party, however, the palm 
of victory was at last awarded ; and they settled upon the branch of an adjoining apple- 
tree, from which they were safely placed in the empty hive, which had been the object of 
their valiant contention, and where they now continue peacefully and industriously employed 


in adding to the stores of their commonwealth. 
3 Comp. Schirach, 49. Mills, 62. Thorley, 163. ST: 


37 


434 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


with poison, he presented it to some workers, which were settled very 
tranquilly before the gate of their mansion. Instahtaneously the little 
party was alarmed: none, however, took flight ; but two or three darted 
upon the poisoned instrument, and one angrily attacked the observer. 
When, however, the poison was coagulated, they were not in the least 
affected by it. A tube impregnated with the odor of poison recently 
ejected being presented to them, affected them in the same manner.! 
This circumstance may sometimes occasion battles amongst them that are 
not otherwise easy to be accounted for. 
Anger is no useless or hurtful passion in bees: it is necessary to them 
for the preservation of themselves and their property, which, besides those 
of their own species, are exposed to the ravages of numerous enemies. 
Of these I have already enumerated several of the class of insects, and 
also some beasts and birds that have a taste for bees and their produce. 
The Merops apiaster (which has been taken in England), the lark and 
other birds, catch them as they fly. Even the frog and the toad are said 
to kill great numbers of bees ; and many that fall into the water probably 
become the prey of fish. ‘The mouse also, especially the field-mouse, in 
winter often commits great ravages in a hive, if the base and orifices are 
not well secured and stopped.? Thorley once lost a stock by mice, which 
made a nest and produced young amongst the combs.? ‘The titmouse, 
according to the same author, will make a noise at the door of the hive, 
and when a bee comes out to see what is the matter will seize and devour 
it. He has known them eat a dozen at a time. The swallows will 
assemble round the hives and devour them like grains of corn. I need 
only mention spiders, in whose webs they sometimes meet with their end ; 
and earwigs and ants, which creep into the hive and steal the honey. 
Upon this subject of the enemies of bees, I cannot persuade myself to 
omit the account Mr. White has given of an idiot boy, who from a child 
showed a strong propensity to bees. They were his food, his amusement, 
his sole object. In the winter he dozed away his time in his father’s 
house, by the fireside, in a torpid state, seldom leaving the chimney-cor- 
ner; but in summer he was all alert and in quest of his game. Hive- 
bees, humble-bees, and wasps were his prey, wherever he found them. 
He had no apprehension from their stings, but would seize them with 
naked hands, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their 
bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his 
bosom between his shirt and skin with these animals ; and sometimes he 
endeavored to confine them in bottles. He was very injurious to men 
that kept bees; for he would glide into their bee-gardens, and sitting 
down before the stools, would rap with his fingers, and so take the bees 
as they came out. He has even been known to overturn the hives for 
the sake of the honey, of which he was passionately fond. Where me- 
theglin was making, he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging 
a draught of what he called bee-wine. As he ran about, he used to make 
a humming noise with his lips resembling the buzzing of bees. This lad 
was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion ; and except in his 
favorite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner 


1 ii. 380. ? Schirach, 53. 3 170. 
* Reaum, v. 710, 5 Thorley, 171. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. A385 


of understanding. Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same 
object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a more 
modern exhibitor of bees ; and we may justly say of him now, 

“ Thou, 


Had thy presiding star propitious shone, 
- Shouldst Wildman be.” ? 


The worker bees are annual insects, though the queen will sometimes 
live more than two years ; but, as every swarm consists of old and young, 
this is no argument for burning them. It is a saying of bee-keepers in 
Holland, that the first swallow and the first bee foretel each other.* This 
perhaps may be correct there; but with us the appearance of bees 
considerably precedes that of the swallow ; for when the early crocuses 
open, if the weather be warm, they may always be found busy in the 
blossom. 

The time that bees will inhabit the same stations is wonderful. Reau- 
mur mentions a countryman who preserved bees in the same hive for thirty 
years.2 Thorley tells us that a swarm took possession of a spot under the 
leads of the study of Ludovicus Vives in Oxford, where they continued a 
hundred and ten years, from 1520 to 1630.4 These circumstances have 
led authors to ascribe to bees a greater age than they canclaim. ‘Thus 
Mouffet, because he knew a bees’ nest which had remained thirty years in 
the same quarters, concludes that they are very long-lived, and very 
sapiently doubts whether they even die of old age at all !? Which is just 
as wise as if a man should contend, because London had existed from 
before the time of Julius Cesar, that therefore its inhabitants must be 
immortal. 

Bees are subject to many accidents; particularly, as I have said above, 
they often fall or are precipitated by the wind into water; and though 
like the cat a bee has not nine lives, nor 

‘“‘Nine times emerging from the crystal flood, 
She mews to every watery god,” 
yet she will bear submersion nine hours ; and, if exposed’to sufficient heat, 
be reanimated. In this case their proboscis is generally unfolded, and 
stretched to its fulllength. At the extremity of this motion is first per- 
ceived, and then at the ends of the legs. After these symptoms appear 
they soon recover, fold up the tongue, and plume themselves for flight.® 
Experimentalists may therefore, without danger, submerge a hive of bees, 
when they want to examine them particularly, for they will all revive upon 
being set to the fire. Reaumur says that in winter, during frosts, the bees 
remain in a torpid state. He must mean severe frosts; for Huber relates 
an instance, when upon a sudden emergency the bees of one of his hives 
set themselves to work in the middle of January ; and he observes that 
they are so little torpid in winter, that even when the thermometer abroad 
is below the freezing point, it stands high in populous hives. Swammer- 
dam, and after him the two authors last quoted, found that sometimes, 
even in the middle of winter, hives have young brood in them, which the 
bees feed and attend to.’ In an instance of this kind, which fell under 


1 White’s Nat. Hist. 8vo. i. 339. 2 Swamm. Bib. Nat. ed. Hill. i. 160. 
3 Ubi. supr. 665. 4178. 5 Theatr. Ins. 21. § Reaum. v. 540. 
7 January 11.1818. My bees were out, and very alert this day. The thermometer stood 


436 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


the eye of Huber, the thermometer stood in the hive at about 92°. In 
colder climates, however, the bees will probably be less active in the 
winter. They are then generally situated between the combs towards 
their lower part. But when the air grows milder, especially if the rays 
of the sun fall upon the hive and warm it, they awake from their lethargy, 
shake their wings, and begin to move and recover their activity ; with 
which their wants returning, they then feed upon the stock of honey and 
bee-bread which they have in reserve. The lowest cells are first uncovered 
and their contents consumed ; the highest are reserved to the last. ‘The 
honey in the lowest cells being collected in the autumn, probably will not 
keep so well as the vernal. 

The degree of heat in a hive in winter, as I have just binted, is great, 
A thermometer near one, in the open alr, that stood in January at 63° 
below the freezing point, upon the insertion of the bulb a little way into 
the hive rose to 221° above it; and could it have been placed between the 
combs, where the bees themselves were agglomerated, the mercury, Reau- 
mur conjectures, would have risen as high as it does abroad in the warm 
days in summer.! Huber says that it stands in frost at 86° and 88° in 
populous hives.? In May, the former author found in a hive in which he 
had lodged in a small swarm, that the thermometer indicated a degree of 
heat above that of the hottest day of summer.? He observes that their 
motion, and even the agitation of their wings, increases the heat of their 
atmosphere. Often, when the squares of glass in a hive appeared cold to 
the touch, if either by design or chance he happened to disturb the bees, 
and the agglomerated mass in a tumult began to move different ways, 
sending forth a great hum, in a very short time so considerable an acces- 
sion of heat was produced, that when he touched the same squares of 
glass he felt them as hot as if they had been held near a fierce fire. By 
teasing the bees, the heat generated was sometimes so great as to soften 
very much the wax of the combs, and even to cause them to fall.* 

The above conclusions, however, of Reaumur and Huber, as to the 
great temperature of the interior of bee-hives in winter, are contrary to 
the results obtained by George Newport, Esq., from his minute and very 
valuable series of experiments to determine this point, which will be fur- 
ther adverted to in directing your attention to the hybernation of insects ; 
but this excellent comparative anatomist, of whose labors British ento- 
mology is so justly proud, has not only fully confirmed what these entomol- 
ogists have advanced as to the extra heat generated by bees in their hives 
in summer, but, after showing that all insects have a temperature greater 
than that of the surrounding ‘atmosphere, and that this temperature, as in 
vertebrate animals, is intimately dependent on the volume and velocity of 
their circulation, and the quantity and activity of their respiration, has 
proved that it is in consequence of the greater energy of this last function 
in bees and humble-bees, owing to the superior development and capacity 
of their trachee and vesicular dilatations, that their power of producing 
heat is so much greater than that of most other insects. If, as happened 
to art a few days ago, a wild bee should chance to drop on a news- 


abroad i in the shade at 51 1-2", When the s sun shone there was quite a cluster of them at 
the mouth of the hives, and great numbers were buzzing about in the air before them. 
t'v.671. 2 {, 354. note *. 3 Ubi. supr. 4 Reaum. v. 672. 


PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 437 


paper you are reading in the open air, and you observe it attentively, you 
will see it pant like a greyhound after a chase, the alternate rapid contrac- 
tion and expansion of its abdominal segments corresponding with the 
numerous and rapid acts of respiration which the exertion of its recent 
flight has caused ; and Mr. Newport found that in the hive-bee, when very 
moderately active, the number of respirations did not exceed 40.per 
minute, while, when in violent action or a state of excitement, they were 
from 110 to 120 per minute. ‘The degree of heat developed by the hive- 
bee is thus always in proportion to the activity of its respiration, which 
again usually depends on the greater or less activity of its motions; and 
hence it is in summer often 25° Fahr. above that of the atmosphere, and 
as much or more even in winter, if the bees be in any way excited.} 


And now, having detailed to you thus amply the wonderful history and 
proceedings of the social tribes of the insect world, you will allow, I 
think, that I have redeemed my pledge, when I taught you to expect that 
this history would exceed in interest and variety and marvelous results 
every thing I had before related to you. I trust, moreover, that you will 
scarcely feel disposed to subscribe to that opinion, though it has the sanction 
of some great names, which attributes these almost miraculous instincts to 
mere sensation; which tells us that the sensorium of these insects is so 
modelled with respect to the different operations that are given them in 
charge, that it is by the attraction of pleasure alone that they are deter- 
mined to the execution of them; and that, as every circumstance relative 
to the succession of their different labors is preordained, to each of them 
an agreeable sensation is affixed by the Creator: and that thus, when the 
bees build their cells; when they sedulously attend to the young brood ; 
when they collect provisions ;—this is the result of no plans, of no affec- 
tion, of no foresight ; but that the sole determining motive is the enjoyment 
of an agreeable sensation attached to each of these operations.” Surely 
it would be better to resolve all their proceedings at once into a direct 
impulse from the Creator, than to maintain a theory so contrary to fact ; 
and which militates against the whole history which M. Huber, who adopts 
this theory from Bonnet, has so ably given of these creatures. That they 
may experience agreeable sensations from their various employments, 
nobody will deny ; but that such sensations instruct them how to perform 
their several operations, without any plan previously impressed upon their 
sensorium, is contrary both to reason and experience. ‘They have a plan, 
it is evident; and that plan, which proves that it is not mere sensation, 
they vary according to circumstances. As to affection—that bees are 
irritable, and feel the passion of anger, no one will deny ; that they are 
~ also susceptible of fear, is equally evident: and if they feel anger and 
fear, why may they not also feel love? Further, if they have recourse 
to precautions for the prevention of any evil that seems to threaten them, 
how can we refuse them a degree of foresight? Must we also resolve 
all their patriotism, and the singular regard for the welfare of their com- 
munity which seems constantly to actuate them, and the sacrifices, even 
sometimes of themselves, that they make to promote and ensure it, into 


? Newport “On the Temperature of Insects,” in Phil. Trans. 1837, p. 309. 311, &c. 
® Huber, i. 313. 
37* 


438 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 


individual self-love ? We would not set them up as riyals to man in intel- 
ligence, foresight, and the affections; but they have Maat degree of each 
that is necessary for their purposes. On account of the difficulties attend- 
ing all theories that give them some degree of these qualities, to resolve 
all into mere sensation is removing one difficulty by a greater. 

That these creatures from mere selfishness build their combs, replenish 
them with the fruit of their unwearied labors, attend so assiduously to 
the nurture of the young brood, lavish their caresses upon their queen, 
prevent all her wants, give a portion of the honey they have collected 
to those that remain in the hives, assist each other, defend their common 
dwelling, and are ready to sacrifice themselves for the public good—is an 
anomaly in rerum natura that ought never to be admitted, unless estab- 
lished by the most irrefragable demonstration; and I think you will not 
be disposed without full proof to yield yourself to a mere theory, so con- 
tradictory of all the facts we know relative to this subject. 

After all, there are mysteries, as to the primum mobile, amongst these 
social tribes, that with all our boasted reason we cannot fathom; nor 
develop satisfactorily the motives that urge them to fulfil in so remarkable 
though diversified a way their different destinies. One thing is clear to 
demonstration, that by these creatures and their instincts the power, wis- 
dom, and goodness of the Great Farner of the Universe are loudly 
proclaimed ; the atheist and infidel confuted; the believer confirmed in 
his faith and trust in Providence, which he thus beholds watching, with 
incessant care, over the welfare of the meanest of his creatures ; and 
from which he may conclude that he, the prince of the creation, will never 
be overlooked or forsaken ; and from them what lessons may be learned of 
patriotisin and self-devotion to the public good ; of loyalty ; of prudence, 
temperance, diligence, and self-denial. But it is time at length to put an 
end to this long disquisition. 


Iam, &c. 


~ 439 


LETTER XXI. 
MEANS BY WHICH INSECTS DEFEND THEMSELVES. 


Wuen a country is particularly open to attack, or surrounded by numerous 
enemies, who from cupidity or hostile feelings are disposed to annoy it, we are 
usually led to inquire what are its means of defence ? whether natural, or 
arising from the number, courage, or skill of its inhabitants. The insect 
tribes constitute such a nation: with them infinite hosts of enemies wage 
continual war, many of whom derive the whole of their subsistence from 
them: and amongst their own tribes there are numerous civil broils, the 
strong often preying upon the weak, and the cunning upon the simple: 
so that unless a watchful Providence (which cares for all its creatures, 
even the most insignificant) had supplied them with some mode of resist- 
ance or escape, this innumerable race must soon be extirpated. ‘That 
such is the case, it shall be my endeavor in this letter to prove; in 
which I shall detail to you some of the most remarkable means of defence 
with which they are provided. For the sake of distinctness I shall con- 
sider these under two separate heads, into which, indeed, they naturally 
divide themselves :—Passive means of defence, such as are independent 
of any efforts of the insect; and active means of defence, such as result 
from certain efforts of the insect, in the employment of those instincts and 
instruments with which Providence has furnished it for this purpose. 

I. The principal passive means of defence with which insects are pro- 
vided are derived from their color and form, by which they either deceive, 
dazzle, alarm, or annoy their enemies ; or from their substance, involuntary 
secretions, vitality, and numbers. 

They often deceive them by imitating various substances. Sometimes 
they so exactly resemble the soil which they inhabit, that it must bea 
practiced eye which can distinguish them from it. ‘Thus, one of our 
scarcest British weevils (Cleonus nebulosus), by its gray color, spotted 
with black, so closely imitates the soil, consisting of white sand mixed 
with black earth, on which I have always found it, that its chance of 
escape, even though it be hunted for by the lyncean eye of an entomolo- 
gist,isnot small. Another insect of the same tribe (T'hylacites scabriculus), 
of which I have observed several species of ground-beetles (Harpa- 
lus, &c.) make great havoc, abounds in pits of a loamy soil of the same 
color precisely with itself; a circumstance that doubtless occasions many 
to escape from their pitiless foes. Several other weevils, for instance 
Chlorima nivea and cretacea, resemble chalk, and perhaps inhabit a chalky 
or white soil. But the most surprising instance of this adaptation of the 
color of an insect to that of the soil where it resides, is found in some of 
the Mantis tribe separated by M. Lefebvre under the generic name of 
Eremiaphila, of which he has given so interesting an account. These 
insects (which he met with in the nymph state only, in the very midst of 


440 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


the African desert, leading to the Oasis of Bahryah, about four days’ jour- 
ney from the Nile, where he could not discover the slightest trace of any 
other insect or substance on which it could by possibility feed, but appa- 
rently passing a life of absolute solitude in the midst of these burning 
sands,) had the most perfect identity of color with that of the soil on which 
it was found, being brown where the soil was brown, and at not above a 
hundred paces distant of a silvery white, when found amongst the white 
particles of broken shells or calcareous rocks of a similar dazzling color. + 
That it was the same species which exhibited this change of color, M. 
Lefebvre did not doubt, nor that the object was its protection from its 
enemies, which it was so well calculated to effect that he could scarcely 
detect it by the closest inspection ; but he confesses himself unable to 
explain whether the different-colored Eremiaphile were confined to the 
soils of the same tints respectively, or, as in the case of the birds and 
quadrupeds which become white in winter in the Polar regions, they have 
the faculty of changing their color as they change their abode.’ 

Many insects, also, are like pebbles and stones, both rough and pol- 
ished, and of various colors; but since this resemblance sometimes results 
from their attitudes, I shall enlarge upon it under my second head: whe- 
ther, however, it be merely passive, or combined with action, we may 
safely regard it as given to enable them to elude the vigilance of their 
enemies. 

A numerous host of our little animals escape from birds and other 
assailants by imitating the color of the plants, or parts of them, which 
they inhabit; or the twigs of shrubs or trees, their foliage, flowers, and 
fruit. Many of the mottled moths, which take their station of diurnal 
repose on the north side of the trunks of trees, are with difficulty distin- 
guished from the gray and green lichens that cover them. Of this kind 
are Misclia aprilina and Acronycta Psi: The caterpillar of Bryophila 
Alge, when it feeds on the yellow Lichen juniperinus, is always yellow ; 
but when upon the gray Lichen savitilis its hue becomes gray.” This 
change is probably produced by the color of its food. Leptocerus atra- 
tus, a kind of May-fly, frequents the black flower-spikes of the common 
sedge (Curex riparia), which fringes the banks of our rivers. I have 
often been unable to distinguish it from them, and the birds probably often 
make the same mistake and pass it by. A jumping bug, very symilar to 
one figured by Schellenberg*, also much resembles the lichens of the oak 
on which I took it. 

The spectre tribe (Phasma) go still further in this mimicry, representing 
a small branch with its spray. I have one from Brazil eight inches 
long, that, unless it was seen to move, could scarcely be conceived to be 
any thing else; the legs, as well as the head, having their little snags and 
knobs, so that no imitation can be more accurate. Perhaps this may be 
the species mentioned by Molina‘, which the natives of Chili call “The 
Devil’s Horse.” 

Other insects, of various tribes, represent the leaves of plants, living, 


1 Ann. Soc. Ent, de France, iv. 459. 2 Fabr. Vorlesungen, 321. 

3 Cimic. Helvet. t. iii. f. 3. 4 Hist. of Chili, \. 172. 

5 Since the first edition of this volume was printed, a lady from the West Indies looking 
at my cabinet, upon being shown this insect, exclaimed “Oh, that is The Devil’s Horse! 44 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 441 


decaying, and dead ; some in their color, and some both in their color and 
shape. The caterpillar of a moth (Hadena Ligustri) that feeds upon 
the privet is so exactly of the color of the underside of the leaf, upon 
which it usually sits in the day-time, that you may have the leaf in your 
hand and yet not discover it.\—The tribe of grasshoppers, called Locusta 
by Fabricius, though the true Locust does not belong to it, in the veining, 
color, and texture “of their elytra, resemble green leaves. 2_The tribe’ of 
Phasmina—named praying-insects and spectres—also of the Orthoptera 
order, often exhibit the same peculiarity.x—Others of them, by the spots 
and mixtures of color observable in these organs, represent leaves that are 
decaying in various degrees.—Those of several species of Mantide \ike- 
wise imitate dry leaves, and so exactly, by their opacity, color, rigidity, - 
and veins, that, were no other part of the animal visible even after a 
close examination, it would be generally affirmed to be nothing but a dry 
leaf. Of this nature is the Phyllium siccifolium, and two or three Brazil- 
ian species in my cabinet, that seem undescribed, which I will show you 
when you give me an opportunity. But these imitations of dry leaves 
are not confined to the Orthoptera order solely. Amongst the Hemiptera, 
the Phyllomorpha parodoxa, a kind of bug, surprised Sparrman not a 
little. He was sheltering himself from the mid-day sun when the air was 
so still and calm as scarcely to shake an aspen leaf, and saw with wonder 
what he mistook for a little withered, pale, crumpled leaf, eaten as it were 
by caterpillars, fluttering from the tree. The sight appeared to him so 
very extraordinary, that he left his place of shelter tocontemplate it more 
nearly ; and could scarcely believe his eyes, when he beheld a living 
insect, in shape and color resembling a fragment of a withered leaf with 
the edges turned up and eaten away as it were by caterpillars, and at the 
same time all over beset with prickles.*»—A British insect, one of our 
largest moths (Gastropacha quercifolia), called by collectors the Lappet- 
moth, affords an example from the Lepidoptera order of the imitation in 
question, its wings representing, both in shape and color, an arid brown 
leaf. Some bugs, belonging to the genus Dictyonota of Mr. Curtis‘, 
simulate portions of leaves in a still further state of decay, when the 
veins only are left; for, the thorax and elytra of these insects being retic- 
ulated, with the little areas or meshes of the net-work transparent, this 
circumstance gives them exactly the ahs ae of small fragments of 
skeletons of leaves. 

But you have probably heard of most of these species of imitation: I 
hope, therefore, you will give credit to the two instances to which I shall 
next call your attention, of insects that even mimic flowers and fruit. 
With respect to the oe I recollect to have seen, in a collection made 
by Mr. Mason at the Cape of Good Hope, a species of the orthopterous 
genus Pneumora, the elytra of which were of a rose or pink color, which 
shrouding its vesiculose abdomen, gave it much the appearance of a fine 
flower.—A most beautiful and brilliant beetle, of the genus Chlamys (Ch. 
Bacca), found by Captain Hancock in Brazil, by the inequalities of its 
ruby colored surface, strikingly resembles some kinds of fruit—And to 


1 Brahm. Insekten Kalender, ii. 353. 


2 Hence we have Locusta citrifolia, laurifolia, camellifolia, myrtifolia, salvifolia, &c., which, 
I believe, all belong to a genus I have named Pterophylia. 
. Voyage, &e. ii. 16.. Westw. Arc. Ent. Puave Il. 4 Brit. Ent.t. 154. 


442 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


make the series of imitations complete, a minute black beetle, with ridges 
upon its elytra (Onthophilus sulcatus'), when lying* without motion, is 
very like the seed of an umbelliferous plant. The dog-tick is not unlike 
a small bean; which resemblance has caused a bean, commonly cultivated 
as food for horses, to be called the tick-bean. The Palma Christi, also, 
had probably the name of Ricinus given to it from the similitude of its 
seed to a tick. 

Another tribe of these little animals, before alluded to, is secured from 
harm by a different kind of imitation, and affords a beautiful instance of 
the wisdom of Providence in adapting means to their end. Some singu- 
lar larve, with a radiated anus?, live in the nests of humble-bees, and are 
the offspring of a particular genus of flies (Volucella), many of the spe- 
cies of which:strikingly resemble those bees in shape,'clothing, and color. 
Thus has the Author of nature provided that they may enter these nests 
and deposit their eggs undiscovered. 

Did these intruders venture themselves amongst the humble-bees in a 
less kindred form, their lives would probably pay the forfeit of their pre- 
sumption. Mr. Sheppard once found one of these larve in the nest of 
Bombus* Raiellus, but we could not ascertain what the fly was. Perhaps 
it might be Vollucella bombylans, which resembles those humble-bees that 
have had a red anus.4 In like manner Mr. W. S. Macleay informs us 
that he has discovered that the larve of those tropical Bombylit which 
have such a bee-like form live on the larve of the bees they so strikingly 
represent ; and he suggests that probably the object of nature in giving 
such an ant-like form to the singular spider described by him under the 
name of Myrmarachne melanocephala is to deceive the ants on which they 
prey.° 

The brilliant colors in which many insects are arrayed may decorate 
them with some other view than that of mere ornament. They may 
dazzle their enemies. The radiant blue of the upper surface of the wings 
of a giant butterfly, abundant in Brazil (Morpho Menelaus), which from 
its size would be a ready prey for any insectivorous birds, by its splendor 
(which I am told, when the insect is flying in the sunshine, is inconceivably 
bright) may produce an effect upon the sight of such birds, that may give it 
no small chance of escape. Latreille hasa similar conjecture with respect 
to the golden wasps (Chrysis L.). These animals lay their eggs in the 
nests of such Hymenoptera, wasps, bee-wasps (Bembex), and bees, as are 
redoubtable for their stings; and therefore have the utmost occasion for 
protection against these murderous weapons. Amongst other defences the 
golden wasps are adorned with the most brilliant colors, which by their 
radiance, especially in the sunny situations frequented by these insects, 
may dazzle the eyes of their enemies, and enable them to effect unhurt 
the purpose for which they were created.® 

The frightful aspect of certain insects is another passive means of defence 


? Oliv. Entomolog. i. no, 8. 17. 2 Latreille, Gen. Crust. et Ins. iv. 322. 

3 Apis. **, e, 2. K. x 

4 Dr. Fleming, however (in Literis), doubts whether the reason here assigned is the cause 
of the resemblance between the Bombus and Volucella ; he thinks if a bee knows a stranger 
of its own species, jt could not be deceived by a fly in the disguise of a bee. But the fact 
that these insects lay their eggs in their nests, and that they resemble humble-bees, seems 
to justify the conclusion drawn in the text. They must get in often undiscovered. 

5 Ann. Nat. Hist. ii. 12. 6 Latreille, Annal. du Mus. 1810, 5. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 443 


by which they sometimes strike beholders, especially children, often great 
insect tormentors, with alarm, and so escape. The terrific and protended 
jaws of the stag-beetle (ucanus Cervus) in Europe, and of the stag-horn 
capricorn beetle (Prionus Cervicornis) in America, may save them from 
the cruel fate of the poor cockchafer!, whose gyrations and motions, when 
transfixed by a pin, too often form the amusement of ill-disciplined chil- 
dren. The threatening horns also, prominent eyes; or black and dismal 
hue of many other Coleoptera belonging to Linné’s genera Scarabeus, 
Cicindela, and Carabus, may produce the same effect. 

But the most striking instances of armor are to be found amongst the 
homopterous Hemiptera. In some of these, the horns that rise from the 
thorax are so singular and monstrous, that nothing parallel to them can be 
found in nature. Of this kind is the Cicada spinosa Stoll*, the Centrotus 
clavatus*, and more particularly the Centrotus globularis*, so remarkable 
for the extraordinary apparatus of balls and spines, which it appears to 
carry erect, like a standard, over its head. What is the precise use of all 
the varieties of armor with which these little creatures are furnished it is 
not easy to say, but they may probably defend them from the attack of 
some enemies. 

Under this head I may mention the long hairs, stiff bristles, sharp spines, 
and hard tubercular prominences with which many caterpillars are clothed, 
bristled, and studded. ‘That these are means of defence is rendered 
more probable by the fact that, in several instances, the animals so distin- 
guished, at their last moult, previous to their assuming the pupa (in which 
state they are protected by other contrivances), appear with a smooth 
skin, without any of the tubercles, hairs, or spines for which they were 
before remarkable.6 Wonderful are the varieties of this kind which insects 
exhibit :—but I shall only here select a few facts more particularly con- 
nected with my present subject. The caterpillar of the great tiger-moth 
(Euprepia Caja), which is beset with long dense hairs, when rolled up— 
an attitudeit usually assumes if alarmed—cannot then be taken without great 
difficulty, slipping repeatedly from the pressure of the fingers. If its hairs 
do not render it distasteful, this may often be the means of its escape 
from the birds. That little destructive beetle, Anthrenus Musorum, which 
so annoys the entomologist, if it gets into his cabinets, when in the larva 
state being covered with bunches of diverging hairs, glides from between 
your fingers as if it were lubricated with oil. The two tufts of hairs near 
the tail of this are most curious in their structure, being jointed through 
their whole length, and terminating in a sharp halberd-shaped point.6 I 
have a small lepidopterous caterpillar from Brazil, the upper side of which 
is thickly beset with strong, sharp, branching spines, which would enter 
into the finger, and would probably render it a painful morsel to any minor 
enemy. 


1 One would almost wish that the same superstition prevailed here which Sparrman ob- 
serves is common in Sweden, with respect to these animals. ‘ Simple people,” says he, 
‘‘ believe that their sins will be forgiven if they set a cockchafer on its legs.” Voyage, 
i. 28. 

2 Cigales, f. 85. 3 Ibid. f. 115. Coquebert, Il/ustr. Ic. ii. t, xxviii. f. 5. 

4 Stoll, Cigales, f. 163. Comp. Pallas, Spict/. Zool. t. i. f. 12- 5 Reaum, v. 94. 

6 This was first pointed out to me by Mr. Briggs of the post-office, who sent me an accu- 
rate drawing of the animal and of one of its hairs. I did not at that time discover that it 
had been figured by De Geer, iv. t. viii. f. L. 7. 


444 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


The powers of annoyance by means of their hairs, with which the moth 
of the fir, and the procession-moth, before noticed, are gifted, are doubtless 
a defensive armor to them. Madame Merian has figured an enormous cater- 
pillar of this kind,—which unfortunately she could not trace to the perfect 
insect,—by the very touch of which her hands, she says, were inflamed, and 
that the inflammation was succeeded by the most excruciating paint The 
vesicatory beetles, likewise (Cantharis vesicatoria, &c.), are not improba- 
bly defended from their assailants by the remarkable quality, so useful to 
suffering mortals, that distinguishes them. 

Your own observation must have proved to you, that insects often 
escape great perils, from the crush of the foot, or of superincumbent 
weights, by the hardness of the substance that covers great numbers of 
them. The elytra of many beetles of the genus Hister are $0 nearly 
impenetrable, that it is very difficult to make a pin pass through them ; 
and the smaller stag-heetle (Dorcus parallelipipedus) will bear almost any 
weight—the head and trunk forming a slight angle with the abdomen— 
which passes over it upon the ground. Other insects are protected by 
the toughness of their skin. A remarkable instance of this is afforded 
by the common forest-fly (Hippobosca equina), which, as was before 
observed, can scarcely be killed by the utmost pressure of the finger and 
thumb. 

The involuntary secretions of these little beings may also be regarded 
as means of defence, which either conceal them from their enemies, make 
them more difficult to be attacked, or render them less palatable. Thus, 
the white froth often observable upon rose-bushes, and other shrubs and 
plants, called by the vulgar frog-spittle—but which, if examined, will be 
found to envelop the larva of a small hemipterous insect (Aphrophora 
spumaria), from whose anus it exudes, although it is sometimes discovered 
even in this concealment by the indefatigable wasps, and becomes their 
prey,—serves to protect the insect, which soon dies when exposed, not 
only from the heat of the sun and from violent rains, but also to hide it 
from the birds and its other foes. The cottony secretion that transpires 
through the skin of Eriosoma?, and some species of Coccus, and in which 
the eggs of the latter are often involved, may perhaps be of use to them 
in this view; either concealing them—for they look rather like little locks 
of cotton, or feathers, than any thing animated—or rendering them dis- 
tasteful to creatures that would otherwise prey upon them. ‘The same 
remark may apply to the slimy caterpillars of some of the saw-flies (Se- 
landria Cerasi, Allantus Scrophularia, &c.). The coat of slime of these 
animals, as Professor Peck observes, retains its humidity though exposed 
to the fiercest sun. Under this head I shall also mention the phosphoric 
insects: the glow-worm (Lampyris) ; the lantern-fly (Fulgora) ; the fire- 
fly (Elater) ; and the electric centipede (Geophilus electricus) ; since 
the light emitted by these animals may defend them from the attack of 
some enemies. Mr. Sheppard once noticed a Carabus running round the 
last-mentioned insect, when shining, as if wishing but afraid to attack it. 


¥ Insect. Surinam. t. 57. Two different species of caterpillars apparently related to this 
of Madame Merian were in the late Mr. Francillon’s cabinet, and are now in my pos- 
session. 

®* To this genus belongs the apple Aphis, called A. lanigera, 

3 Nat. Hist. of the Slug-worm, 7. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 445 


Various insects, doubtless, find the wonderful vitality’ with which they 
are endowed another means of defence; at least of obviating the effects 
of an attack. So that, when to all appearance they are mortally wound- 
ed, they recover, and fulfil the end of their creation. Indeed female Le- 
pidoptera, especially of the larger kinds, will scarcely die, do what you 
will, till they have laid their eggs. Dr. Arnold, a most acute obseryer, 
relates to Mr. Macleay, that having pinned Scolia quadrimaculata, a 
hymenopterous insect, down in the same box with many others, amongst 
which was the humming-bird hawk-moth (Macroglossa stellatarum), its 
proper food ; it freed itself from the pin that transfixed it, and, neglecting 
all the other insects in the box, attacked the Sphinx, and pulling it to 
pieces devoured a large portion of its abdomen. 

We often wonder how the cheese-mite (Acarus Siro) is at hand to 
attack a cheese wherever deposited ; but when we learn from Leeuwen- 
hoek, that one lived eleven weeks gummed on its back to the point of a 
needle without food, our wonder will be diminished.” Another species of 
mite (Uropoda vegetans) was observed by De Geer to live some time in 
spirits of wine.? This last circumstance reminds me of an event which 
befel myself, that I cannot refrain from relating to you, since it was the 
cause of my taking up the pursuit I am recommending to you. One 
morning I observed on my study window a little lady-bird yellow with 
black dots (Coccinella 22-puncta)—“ You are very pretty,” said I to 
myself, “and I should like to have a collection of such creatures.” 
Immediately I seized my prey, and not knowing how to destroy it, I 
immersed it in geneva. After Jeaving it in this situation a day and a 
night, and seeing it without motion, I concluded it was dead, and laid it 
in the sun to dry. It no sooner, however, felt the warmth than it began 
to move, and afterwards flew away. From this. time I began to attend 
to insects—The chameleon-fly (Stratyomis Chameleon) was observed 
by Swammerdam to retain its vital powers after an immersion equally 
long in spirits of wine. Gcedart affirms that this fly, on which account 
it was called chameleon, will live nine months without food ; a circum- 
stance, if true, more wonderful than what I formerly related to you with 
respect to one of the aphidivorous flies.A—If insects will escape unhurt 
from a bath of alcohol, it may be supposed that one of water will be less 
to be dreaded by them. ‘To this they are often exposed in rainy weather, 
when ruts and hollows are filled with water: but when the water is dried 
up, it is seldom that any dead carcasses of insects are to be seen in them. 
Mr. Curtis submerged the fragile aphides for sixteen hours ; when taken 
out of the water they immediately showed signs of life, and out of four, 
three survived the experiment :—an immersion of twenty-four hours, how- 
ever, proved fatal to them.® 

_ The late ingenious, learned, and lamented Dr. Reeve of Norwich, once 
related to me that he found in a hot fountain on the top of a mountain, 


1 The penetrating genius of Lord Verulam discovered in a great degree the cause of this 
vitality. ‘ They stirre,” says he, speaking of insects, “a good while after their heads are 
off, or that they be cut in pieces; which is caused also for that their vital spirits are more 
diffused thorowont all their parts, and lesse confined to organs than in perfect creatures.” 
Sylv. Sylvar. cent. vii. § 697. 

* Leeuw. Epist. 77., 1694. 3 De Geer, vii. 127. 

4 Bib. Nat. ii. c. 3. 5 Linn. Trans. vi. 84. 


38 


446 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


near Leuk in the Valais in Switzerland, in which the thermometer stood 
at 205°, transparent larve, probably of gnats, or some such insect.—Lord 
Bute also, in a letter to my late revered friend, the Rev. William Jones 
of Nayland, imparts a similar observation made by his Lordship at the 
baths of Abano, near the Euganian mountains, on the borders of the Pa- 
duan states. They are strong, sulphureous, boiling springs, oozing out of 
a rocky eminence in great numbers, and spreading over an acre of the 
top of a gentle hill. In the midst of these boiling springs, within three 
feet of five or six of them, rises a tepid one about blood warm. But the 
most extraordinary circumstance which he relates is, that not only confer- 
vas were found in the bozling springs, but numbers of small black beetles, 
that died upon being taken out and plunged into cold water..—And once, 
having taken in the hot dung of my cucumber-bed a small beetle (Syn- 
chita Juglandis), 1 immersed’ it in boiling water; and after keeping it 
submerged a sufficient time, as I thought, to destroy it, upon taking it 
out, and laying it to dry, it soon began to move and walk. Its native 
station being of so high a temperature, Providence has fitted it for it, by 
giving it extraordinary powers of sustaining heat. Other insects are as 
remarkable for bearing any degree of cold. Some gnats that De Geer 
observed, survived after the water in which they were was frozen into a 
mass of ice: and Reaumur relates many similar instances.” 

The last passive means of defence that I mentioned, was the multipli- 
cation of insects. Some species, the Aphides for instance, and the Grass- 
hoppers and Locusts, have such an infinite host of enemies, that were it 
not for their numbers the race would soon be annihilated.—But as passive 
means of defence have detained us sufficiently Jong, it is enough to have 
touched upon this head. Let us then now proceed to such as may be 
called active ; in which the volition of the animal bears some part. 


Il. The active means of defence, which tend to secure insects from 
injury or attack, are much more numerous and diversified than the passive ; 
and also more interesting, since they depend, more or less, upon the efforts 
and industry of these creatures themselves. When urged by danger, they 
endeavor to repel it, either by having recourse to certain attitudes or 
motions ; producing particular noises; emitting disagreeable scents or 
fluids ; employing their limbs, or weapons, and valor; concealing them- 
selves in various ways, or by counteracting the designs and attacks of 
their enemies by contrivances that require ingenuity and skill. 

The attitudes which insects assume for this purpose are various. Some 
are purely imitative, as in many instances detailed above. I possess a 
diminutive rove-beetle (Aleochara complicans) K. Ms.), to which my 
attention was attracted as a very minute, shining, round black pebble. 
This successful imitation was produced by folding its head under its 
breast, and turning up its abdomen over its elytra; so that the most 
piercing and discriminating eye would never have discovered it to be 
aninsect. I have observed that a carrion beetle (Silpha thoracica) when 
alarmed has recourse to a similar manceuvre. Its orange-colored thorax, 


1 J. Mason Good’s Anniversary Oration, delivered March 8, 1808, before the Medical Society 
of London, p. 31. 


2 De Geer, vi. 355. ; comp. 320., and Reaum. ii. 141—147. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 447 


the rest of the body being black, renders it particularly conspicuous. To 
obviate this inconvenience, it turns its head and tail inwards till they are 
parallel with the trunk and abdomen, and gives its thorax a vertical direc- 
tion, when it resembles a rough stone. ‘The species of another genus of 
beetles (Agathidium) will also bend both head and thorax under the elytra, 
and so assume the appearance of shining globular pebbles. 

Related to the defensive attitude of the two last-mentioned insects, and 
precisely the same with that of the Armadillo (Dasypus) amongst quad- 
rupeds, is that of one of the species of woodlquse (Armadillo vulgaris). 
This insect, when alarmed, rolls itself up into a little ball. In this atti- 
tude its legs and the underside of the body, which are soft, are entirely 
covered and defended by the hard crust that forms the upper surface of 
the animal. These balls are perfectly spherical, black, and shining, and 
belted with narrow white bands, so as to resemble beautiful beads ; and 
could they be preserved in this form and strung, would make very orna- 
mental necklaces and bracelets. At least so thought Swammerdam’s 
maid, who, finding a number of these insects thus rolled up in her master’s 
garden, mistaking them for beads, employed herself in stringing them on 
a thread ; when to her great surprise, the poor animals beginning to move 
and struggle for their liberty, crying out and running away in the utmost 
alarm, she threw down her prize.!. The golden-wasp tribe also (Chrysi- 
dide), all of which I suspect to be parasitic insects, roll themselves up, 
as I have often observed, into a little ball when alarmed, and can thus 
secure themselves—the upper surface of the body being remarkably hard, 
and impenetrable to their weapons—from the stings of those Hymenoptera 
whose nests they enter with the view of depositing their eggs in their 
offspring. Latreille noticed this attitude in Parnopes carnea, which, he 
tells us, Bembex rostratra pursues, though it attacks no other similar insect, 
with great fury ; and, seizing it with its feet, attempts to dispatch it with 
its sting, from which it thus secures itself.2_ M. Lepelletier de Saint-Far- 
geau, to whom entomology is indebted for so many new facts relative to 
the manners of hymenopterous insects, has given us a striking account of 
a contest between the art of one of these parasites (Hedychrum regium) 
and the courage of one of the mason-bees, in endeavoring to defend its 
nest from its attack. The mason-bee had partly finished one of her cells, 
and flown away to collect a store of pollen and honey. During her 
absence the female parasitic Hedychrum, after having examined this cell 
by entering it head foremost, came out again, and walking backwards, 
had begun to introduce the posterior part of her body into it, preparatory 
to depositing an eggs, when the mason-bee arriving laden with her pollen- 
paste threw herself upon her enemy, which, availing herself of the means 
of defence above adverted to, rolled herself up into a compact ball, with 
nothing but the wings exposed, and equally invulnerable to the sting or 
mandibles of her assailant. In one point, however, our little defender of 
her domicile saw that her insidious foe was accessible; and, accordingly, 
with her mandibles cut off her four wings, and let her fall to the ground, 
and then entering her cell with a sort of inquietude, deposited her store 
of food, and flew to the fields for a fresh supply ; but scarcely was she 


1 Hill’s Swamm. i. 174. 2 Ann, du Mus. 1810, 5. 


448 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


gone before the Hedychrum, unrolling herself, and faithful to her instinct 
and her object, though deprived ot her wings, crept Gp the wall directly 
to the cell from whence she had been precipitated, and quietly placed 
her egg in it against the side below the level of the pollen-paste, so as to 
prevent the mason-bee from seeing it on her return.} 

Other insects endeavor to protect themselves from danger by simulating 
death. ‘The common dung-chafer (Geotrupes stercorarius) when touched, 
or in fear, sets out its legs as stiff as if they were made of iron-wire—which 
is their posture when dead—and remaining perfectly motionless, thus de- | 
ceives the rooks which prey upon them, and like the ant-lion before cele- 
brated will eat them only when alive. A different attitude is assumed by 
one of the tree-chafers (Hoplia pulverulenta), probably with the same view. 
It sometimes elevates its posterior legs into the air, so as to form astraight 
vertical line, at right angles with the upper surface of its body.—Another 
genus of insects of the same order, the pill-beetles (Byrrhus), have recourse 
to a method the reverse of this. ‘They pack their legs, which are short 
and flat, so close to their body, and lie so entirely without motion when 
alarmed, that they look like a dead body, or rather the dung of some small 
animal.—Amongst the weevil tribe, most of the species of Germar’s genus 
Cryptorynchus, including several modern genera or subgenera, when an 
entomological finger approaches them, as I have often experienced to my 
great disappointment, applying their rostrum and legs to the underside of 
their trunk, fall from the station on which you hope to entrap them to the 
ground or amongst the grass; where, lying without stirring a limb, they 
are scarcely to be distinguished from the soil around them. Thus also, 
doubtless, they often disappoint the birds as well as the entomologist.—A 
little timber-boring beetle (Anobium pertinax, and others of the genus have 
the same faculty), which, when the head is withdrawn somewhat within 
the thorax, much resembles a monk with his hood, has long been famous 
for a most pertinacious simultation of death. All that has been related of 
the heroic constancy of American savages, when taken and tortured by 
their enemies, scarcely comes up to that which these little creatures exhibit. 
You may maim them, pull them limb from limb, roast them alive over a 
slow fire®, but you will not gain your end ; not a joint will they move, nor 
show by the least symptom that they suffer pain. Do not think, how- 
ever, that I ever tried these experiments upon them myself, or that I 
recommend you to do the same. I am content to believe the facts that I 
have here stated upon the concurrent testimony of respectable witnesses, 
without feeling any temptation to put the constancy of the poor insect 
again to the test.—A similar apathy is shown by some species of saw-flies 
(Serrifera), which when alarmed conceal their antenne under their body, 
place their legs close to it, and remain without motion even when trans- ' 
fixed by a pin.—Spiders also simulate death by folding up their legs, 
falling from their station, and remaining motionless ; and when in this situa- 
tion they may be pierced and torn to pieces without their exhibiting the 
slightest symptom of pain.° 

There is a certain tribe of caterpillars called surveyors (Geometre), 
that will sometimes support themselves for whole hours, by means of their 


1 Encycl. Method. x.8. Lacordaire, Introd. a U Entom. ii. 488. 
* De Geer, iv. 229. 3 Smellie, Phil. of Nat. Hist. i. 150. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 449 


posterior legs, solely upon their anal extremity, forming an angle of various 
degrees with the branch on which they are standing, and looking like 
one of its twigs. Many concurring circumstances promote this deception. 
The body is kept stiff and immovable with the separations of the seg- 
ments scarcely visible; it terminates in a knob, the legs being applied 
close, so as to resemble the bud at the end of a twig; besides which, it 
often exhibits intermediate tubercles which increase the resemblance. Tits 
color too is usually obscure, and similar to that of the bark of a tree. 
So that, doubtless, the sparrows and other birds are frequently deceived 
by this manceuvre, and thus baulked of their prey. Résel’s gardener, 
mistaking one of these caterpillars for a dead twig, started back in 
great alarm when upon attempting to break it off he found it was a living 
animal.? 

But insects do not always confine themselves to attitudes by which 
they meditate escape or concealment ; they sometimes, to show their cour- 
age, put themselves in a posture of defence, and even have in view the 
annoyance as well as the repelling of their foes. The great rove-beetle 
(Goerius olens) presents an object sufficiently terrific, when with its large 
jaws expanded, and its abdomen turned over its head, like a scorpion, 
it menaces its enemies, some of which this ferocious attitude may deter 
from attacking it. Mr. Bingley informs us that the giant earwig (Labi- 
dura gigantea), a rare species that his researches have added to the cata- 
logue of British insects, turns up over its head, in a similar manner, its 
abdomen, which being armed at the end with a large forceps must give it 
an appearance still more alarming.” _ 

The caterpillars of some hawk-moths (Sphinz), particularly that which 
feeds upon the privet, when they repose, holding strongly with their pro- 
legs the branch on which they are standing, rear the anterior part of their 
body so as to form nearly a right angle ‘with the posterior; and in this 
position it will remain perfectly tranquil,—thus eluding the notice of its 
enemies, or alarming them,—perhaps for hours. Reaumur relates that a 
gardener in the employment of the celebrated Jussieu used to be quite 
disconcerted by the self-sufficient air of these animals, saying they must 
be very proud, for he had never seen any other caterpillars hold their head 
so high. From this attitude, which precisely resembles that which sculp- 
tors have assigned to the fabulous monster called by that name, the term 
Sphinz has been used to designate this genus of insects.—The caterpillar 
of a moth (Lophopteryx camelina) noticed by the author just quoted, 
whenever it rests from feeding, turns its-head over its back, then become 
concave, at the same time elevating its tail, the extremity of which 
remains in a horizontal position, with two short horns like ears behind it. 
Thus the six anterior legs are in the air, and the whole animal looks like a 
quadruped in miniature; the tail being its head—the horns its ears— 
and the reflexed head simulating a tail curled over its back.4 In this 
seemingly unnatural attitude it will remain without motion for a very long 
time. 

Some lepidopterous larve, that fix the one half of the body and elevate 


1 Ros. I. v. 27. 4 
2 Puate I. Fie. 7. Linn. Trans. x, 404. 3 Reaum. ii. 253. 
* Reaum. ii. 260. t. 20. f. 10, 11. Compare Sepp. IV. t. i. f. 3—7. 

38* 


/ 


“ 


450 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


the other, agitate the elevated part, whether it be the head or the tail, as 
if to strike what disturbs them.! The giant caterpillar of a large North 
American moth (Ceracampa regalis) is armed behind the head and at the 
back of the anterior segments with seven or eight strong curved spines 
from half to three fourths of an inch in length. Mr. Abbot tells us that 
this caterpillar is called in Virginia the hickory-horned devil, and that when 
disturbed it draws up its head, shaking or striking it from side to side ; 
which attitude gives it so formidable an aspect, that no one, he affirms, 
will venture to handle it, people in general dreading it as much as a rattle- 
snake. When, to convince the Negroes that it was harmless, he himself 
took hold of this animal in their presence, they used to reply that it could 
not sting him, but would them.” The species of a genus of beetles named 
Malachius endeavor to alarm their enemies and show their rage by puffing 
out and inflating four vesicles from the sides of their body, which are of a 
bright red, soft, and of an irregular shape. When the cause of alarm is 
removed, they are retracted, so that only a small portion of them 
appears.? . 

Insects often endeavor to repel or escape from assailants by their motions. 
Mr. White, mentioning a wild bee that makes its nest on the summit of a 


‘remarkable hill near Lewes in Sussex, in the chalky soil, says :—‘* When 


people approach the place these insects begin to be alarmed, and with a 
sharp and hostile sound dash and strike round the heads and faces of 
intruders. I have often been interrupted myself while contemplating the 
grandeur of the scenery around me, and have thought myself in danger of 
being stung.”4—The hive-bee will sometimes have recourse to the same 
expedient, when her hive is approached too near, and thus give you notice 
what you may expect if you do not take her warning and retire—Hum- 
ble-bees when disturbed, whether out of the nest or in it, assume some 
very grotesque and at the same time threatening attitudes. If you put 
your finger to them, they will either successively or simultaneously lift up the 
three legs of one side; turn themselves upon their back ; bend up their 
anus and show their sting accompanied by a drop of poison. Sometimes 
they will even spirt out that liquor. When in the nest, if it be attacked, 
they also beat their wings violently and emit a great hum.® 

These motions menace vengeance; those of some other insects are 
merely to effect their escape. ‘Thus I have observed that the species of 
the May-fly tribe (Trichoptera®), when I have attempted to take them, 
have often glided away from under my hand—without moving their limbs 
that I could discover—in a remarkable manner.? M. de Villiers informs 
us that different species of moths of the genera Orthosia and Cerastis 
never avail themselves of their wings to escape the dangers which threaten 
them; but if you attempt to seize them immediately let themselves fall 
to the ground, and then begin running with such rapidity, that it is very 
difficult to obtain possession of them.® And in like manner various Cur- 


1 Reaum. i. 100. 2 Smith’s Abbot's Ins. of Georgia, ii. 121. 

3 De Geer, iv. 74. 4 Nat. Hist. ii. 268. 

5 P. Huber in Linn. Trans. vi. 219. Kirby, Mon. Ap. Angl. i. 201. 

8 Kirby in Linn. Trans. xi. 87. note *. 

7 Evidently by the action of the numerous spines on the legs all directed backwards, just 
as an ear of barley will mount up the sleeve of a coat. 

8 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, xi. bull. xii. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. . 451 


culionide and other coleopterous insects, if they see any one approach, 
contract their legs, and suffer themselves to fall from the leaf or other 
surface on which they rest, among the grass or plants below, and thus 
escape. ‘To notice the ordinary motions of insects, which are often means 
by which they avoid danger, would here be premature, since they will be 
fully considered in a subsequent letter. I shall, therefore, only mention 
the zigzag flight of butterflies and the traverse sailing of humble-bees, 
which certainly render it more difficult for the birds to catch them while 
on the wing. 

Noises are another means of defence to which insects have occasional 
recourse. I haveheard thelunar dung-beetle ( Copris hmaris) when disturb- 
ed utter a shrill sound. Dynastes Oromedon, another of the lamellicorn 
insects, was observed by Dr. Arnold to make, when alarmed, a kind of 
creaking noise, which it produced by rubbing its abdomen against its 
elytra. A third of the same tribe (Trox sabulosus) emits a small sibilant 
or chirping noise, as I once observed when I found several feeding in a 
ram’s horn.t The “drowsy hum” of beetles, humble-bees, and other 
insects, in their flight, may tend to preserve them from some of their 
aérial assailants. And the angry chidings of the inhabitants of the hive, 
which are very distinguishable from their ordinary sounds, may be regarded 
as warning voices to those from whom they apprehend evil or an attack. 
I have before observed that the death’s-head hawk-moth (Acherontia 
_Atropos), when menaced by the stings of ten thousand bees enraged at 
her depredations upon their property, possesses the secret. to disarm them 
of their fury. This insect, when in fear or danger, is known to produce 
a sharp, shrill, mournful cry, which with the superstitious has added to 
the alarm produced by the symbol of death which signalizes its thorax. 
This cry, there is reason to believe, affects and disarms the bees, so as to 
enable her to proceed in her spoliations with impunity.” One of these 
insects being once brought to a learned divine, who was also an entomol- 
ogist, when he was unwell, he was so much moved by its plaintive noise, 
that, instead of devoting it to destruction, he gave the animal its life and 
liberty. I might say more upon this subject of defensive noises, but I 
shall reserve what I have further to communicate, to a letter which I 
purpose devoting to the sounds produced or emitted by insects. 

You are acquainted with the singular property of the skunk (Viverra 
putorius L.), which repels its assailants by the fetid vapor that it explodes ; 
but perhaps are not aware that the Creator has endowed many insects 
with the same property, and for the same purpose, some of which exhale 
powerful or disagreeable odors at all times, and from the general surface 
of their body ; while they issue from others only through particular organs, 
and when they are attacked. 

Of the former description of defensive scents there are numerous exam- 
ples in almost every order; for, next to plants and vegetable substances, 
insects, of any part of the creation, afford the greatest diversity of odors. 


1 Numerous other beetles make the same kind of sound, either by the friction of the 
head in the anterior prothoracic cavity, or by rubbing the narrowed front of the mesothorax 
against the sides of the posterior prothoracic cavity, or the abdomen against the elytra. 

2 Huber appears to be of this opinion; he does not, however, lay great stress upon it. 
Yet there seems no other way of accounting for the impunity with which this animal com- 
mits its depredation. Huber, ii. 299. 


452 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. , 


In the Coleoptera order a very common beetle, the whirlwig (Gyrinus 
natator), will infect your finger for a long time with a disagreeable rancid 
smell; while two other species, G. minutus and villosus, are scentless, 
Those unclean feeders, the carrion beetles (Si/pha L.), as might be 
expected from the nature of their food, are at the same time very fetid. 
Pliny tells us of a Blatta, which, from his description, is evidently the 
darkling-beetle (Blaps mortisaga), and which he recommends as an infal- 
lible nostrum, when applied with oil extracted from the cedar, in other- 
wise incurable ulcers, that was an object of general disgust on account of 
its ill scent, a character which it still maintains!; which scent, from Mr. 
Thwaites’s investigation of the internal anatomy of this insect, proceeds 
from two small oblong vesicles near the anus, the fluid contents of which, 
when they are extracted and dissected under water, rise in a bubble to 
the surface, and there becoming vaporized diffuse the fetid smell peculiar 
to this species. Numbers of the ground-beetles (Eutrechina) that are 
found under stones, and in places that have not a free circulation of air, 
exhale a most disagreeable and penetrating odor, which De Geer observes 
resembles that of rancid butter, and is not soon got rid of. It is produced, 
he says, from an unctuous matter that transpires through the body*; but 
I am rather inclined to think it proceeds from the extremity. I have 
noticed that some small beetles of the Omalium genus, for instance O, 
rivulare, and another species that I once found in abundance on the prim- 
rose (O. Primula K. Ms.), especially the latter, are abominably fetid 
when taken, and that it requires more than one washing to free the fingers 
from it. Every one knows that the cock-roach (Blatta orientalis), belong- 
ing to the Orthoptera order, is not remarkable for a pleasant scent; but 
none are more notorious for their bad character in this respect than the 
bug tribe (Geocorise), which almost universally exhale an odor that mixes 
with the scent of cucumbers another extremely unpleasant and annoying. 
Some, however, are less disgusting, particularly Lygeus Hyoscyamt, which 
yields, De Geer found, an agreeable odor of thyme.*—Several lepidopte- 
rous larve are defended by their ill smell; but I shall only particularize 
the silk-worms, which on that account are said to be unwholesome.—Phry- 
ganea grandis, a kind of May-fly, is a trichopterous insect that offends 
the nostrils in this way ; but a worse is Chrysopa Perla, a golden-eyed 
and lace-winged fly, of the next order, whose beauty is counterbalanced 
by a strong scent of human ordure that proceeds from jt.—Numberless 
Hymenoptera act upon the olefactory nerves by their ill or powerful efflu- 
via. One of them, an ant (Formica fetida De Geer, fetens Oliv.), has 
the same smell with the insect last mentioned.4 Our common black ant 
(EF. fuliginosa), whose curious nests in trees have been before described 
to you, is an insect of a powerful and penetrating scent, which it imparts 
to every thing with which it comes in contact ; and Fabricius distinguishes 
another (£". analis Latr., fetens F.) by an epithet (fetidissima) which 
sufficiently declares its properties. Many wild bees (Andrena) are dis- 
tinguished by their pungent alliaceous smell. Crabro U-flavum, a wasp- 
like insect, is remarkable for the penetrating and spirituous effluvia of ether 
that it exhales.° Indeed there is scarcely any species in this order that 


1 Hist. Nat. |. xxix. c. 6. 2 iv. 86. 3 De Geer, iii. 249. 374. 
* De Geer, iii. 611. 5 Kirby, Mon, Ap. Angl. i. 136. note a. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. _ 453 


has not a peculiar scent.—Some dipterous insects—though these in gene- 
‘ral neither offend nor delight us by it—are distinguished by their smell. 
Thus Mesembrina mystacea, a fly that in its grub state lives in cow-dung, 
savors in this respect, when a denizen of the air, of the substance in 
which it first drew breath.! And another (Sepsis cynipsea) emits a fra- 
grant odor of beaum.2—I have not much to tell you with respect to apte- 
rous insects, except that Julus terrestris, a common millepede, leaves a 
strong and disagreeable scent upon the fingers when handled.? Most of 
the insects I have here enumerated, probably, are defended from some 
enemy or injury by the strong vapors that exhale from them; and, per- 
haps, some in the list produce it from particular organs not yet noticed. 

I shall next beg your attention to those insects that emit their smell 
from particular organs. Of these, some are furnished with a kind of scent- 
vessels, which I shall call osmateria; while in others it issues from the 
intestines at the ordinary passage. In the former instance the organ is 
usually retractile within the body, being only exserted when it is used: it 
is generally a bifid vessel, something in the shape of the letter Y. Linné, 
in his generic character of the rove-beetles (Staphylinide), mentions two 
oblong vesicles as proper to this genus. ‘These organs,—which are by no 
means common to the whole genus, even as restricted by late writers,— 
are its osmateria, and give forth the scent for which some species, particu- 
larly Ocypus brunnipes, are remarkable. If you press the abdomen hard, 
you will find that these vesicles are only branches from a common stem ; 
and you may easily ascertain that the smell of this insect, which mixes 
something extremely fetid with a spicy odor, proceeds from their extremity. 
—A similar organ, half an inch in length, and of the same shape, issues 
from the neck of the caterpillar of the swallow-tail-butterfly (Papilio 
Machaon). When I pressed this caterpillar, says Bonnet, near its anterior 
part, it darted forth its horn as if it meant to prick me with it, directing it 
towards my fingers; but it withdrew it as soon as I left off pressing it. 
This horn smells strongly of fennel, and probably is employed by the insect, 
by means of its powerful scent, to drive away the flies and ichneumons 
that annoy it. A similar horn is protruded by the slimy larva of P. An- 
chises and many other Equites*, as also Parnassius Apollo. Another 
insect, the larva of a species of saw-fly described by De Geer, is furnished 
with osmateria, or scent-organs, of a different kind. They are situated 
between the first five pair of intermediate legs, which they exceed in size,- 
and are perforated at the end like the rose of a watering-pot. If you 
touch the insect, they shoot out like the horns of a snail, and emit a most 
nauseous odor, which remains long upon the finger ; but when the pres- 
sure is removed they are withdrawn within the body.? The grub of the 
poplar-beetle (Chrysomela Populz), also, is remarkable for similar organs. 
On each of the nine intermediate dorsal segments of its body is a pair of 
black, elevated, conical tubercles of a hard substance; from all of these 
when touched the animal emits a small drop of a white milky fluid, the 
smell of which, De Geer observes, is almost insupportable, being inex- 
pressibly strong and penetrating. These drops proceed at the same instant 


1 De Geer, vi. 134. Meigen, Dipt. v. 12. ® De Geer, vi. 135. 33. 
3 Thid. vii. 581. 4 Merian Surinam, 17. Jones in Linn. Trans. ii. 64. 
® De Geer, ii. 989. t. xxxvii. f. 6. 


A454 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


from all the eighteen scent-organs ; which forms a curious spectacle. The 
insect, however, does not waste this precious fluidg each drop instead of 
falling, after appearing for a moment and dispensing its perfume, is with- 
drawn again within its receptacle, till the pressure is repeated, when it 
re-appears." 

I shall now introduce you to the true counterparts of the skunk, which 
explode a most fetid vapor from the ordinary passage, and combat their 
enemies with repeated discharges of smoke and noise. The most famous 
for their exploits in this way are those beetles which on this account are 
distinguished by the name of bombardiers (Brachinus). The most com- 
mon species (B. crepitans), which is found occasionally in many parts of 
Britain, when pursued by its great enemy, Calosoma inquisitor, seems at 
first to have no mode of escape: when suddenly a Joud explosion is heard, 
and a blue smoke attended by a very disagreeable scent, is seen to proceed 
from its anus, which immediately stops the progress of its assailant: when 
it has recovered from the effect of it, and the pursuit is renewed, a second 
discharge again arrests its course. The bombardier can fire its artillery 
twenty times in succession if necessary, and so gain time to effect its 
escape; and what is still more remarkable, Mr. Holme found that by 
pressing the abdomen near the anus, the discharges may be produced 
after death. In this way two specimens which had been dead eighteen 
hours, gave one fifteen and the other nineteen discharges before being 
exhausted, and he even obtained explosions from some specimens which 
had been dead four days; but most of these along with the noise dis- 
charged a black grainy fluid without smoke.? Another species (B. displo- 
sor) makes explosions similar to those of B. crepitans: when irritated it 
can give ten or twelve good discharges ; but afterwards, instead of smoke, 
it emits a yellow or brown fluid. By bending the joints of its abdomen 
it can direct its smoke to any particular point. M. Leon Dufour observes 
that this smoke has a strong and pungent odor, which has a striking analogy 
with that exhaled by the nitric acid. It is caustic, reddening white paper, 
and producing on the skin the sensation of burning, and forming red spots, 
which pass into brown, and though washed remain several days.? ‘This 
burning sensation, M. Lacordaire informs us, when arising from the dis- 
charges of the large exotic species, is so painful, that he has often been 
obliged to let those which he had taken escape. The same power of 
emitting explosions, as a means of defence, is found also in some other 
coleopterous species, as in those of the genus Paussus, according to M. 
Payen, who had an opportunity of studying their habits in the isles of 
Sunda and the Moluccas‘; in those of Cerapterus according to Mr. Mac- 
Leay®; and in those of Ozena in a slight degree, according to M. Lacor- 
daire. 

Another expedient to which insects have recourse, to rid themselves 
of their enemies, is the emission of disagreeable fluids. These some dis- 
charge from the mouth ; others from the anus; others again from the joints 
of the limbs and segments of the body; and a few from appropriate 
organs. 


Ibid. v. 291. Compare Ray’s Letters, 43. 

® Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. vii. 

3 Ann. du Mus. xviii. 70. 4 Lacordaire, Introd. & l’ Entom. ii. 56. 
® Westwood, Mod. Classif. of Ins. i. 151. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 455 


You have doubtless often observed a black beetle crossing pathways 
with a slow pace, which feeds upon the different species of bedstraw 
(Galium), called by some the bloody-nose beetle (Timarcha tenebricosa). 
This insect, when taken, usually ejects from its mouth a clear drop or two 
of red fluid, which will stain paper of an orange color. The carrion- 
beetles (Silpha and Necrophorus), as also the larger Carabi, defile us, if 
handled roughly, with brown fetid saliva. Mr. Sheppard having taken 
one of the latter (C. violaceus), applied it in joke to his son’s face, and 
was surprised to hear him immediately cry out as if hurt: repeating 
the experiment with another of his boys, he complained of its making him 
smart: upon this he touched himself with it, and it caused as much pain 
as if, after shaving, he had rubbed his face with spirits of wine. ‘This he 
observed was not invariably the case with this beetle, its saliva at other 
times being harmless. Hence he conjectures that its caustic nature, in 
the instance here recorded, might arise from its food ; which he had rea- 
son to think had at that time been the electric centipede (Geophilus elec- 
tricus). Lesser having once touched the anal horn of the caterpillar of 
some sphinx, suddenly turning its head round it vomited upon his hand a 
quantity of green viscous and very fetid fluid, which, though he washed it 
frequently with soap and fumed it with sulphur, infected it for two days.* 
Lister relates that he saw a spider, when upon being provoked it attempted 
to bite, emit several times small drops of very clear fluid.” Mr. Briggs 
observed a caterpillar caught in the web of one of our largest spiders, by 
means of a fluid which it sent forth entirely dissolve the great breadth of 
threads with which the latter endeavored to envelop it, as fast as produced, 
till the spider appeared quite exhausted.? The caterpillars also of a par- 
ticular tribe of saw-flies, remarkable for the beautiful pennated antenne of 
the males (Pteronus)*, when disturbed eject a drop of fluid from their 
mouth. ‘Those of one species inhabiting the fir-tree (P¢. Pint) are ordi- 
narily stationed on the narrow leaves of that tree—which they devour 
most voraciously in the manner that we eat radishes—with their head 
towards the point. Sometimes two are engaged opposite to each other on 
the same leaf. They collect in groups often of more than a hundred, and 
keep as close to each other as they can. When a branch is stripped they 
all move together to another. If one of these caterpillars be touched or 
disturbed, it immediately with a twist lifts the anterior part of its body, 
and emits from its mouth a drop of clear resin, perfectly similar both in 
odor and consistence to that of the fir.» What is still more remarkable, no 
sooner does a single individual of the group give itself this motion, than all 
the rest, as if they were moved by a spring, instantaneously do the same.® 
Thus these animals fire a volley, as it were, at their annoyers, the scent of 
which is probably sufficient to discomfit any ichneumons, flies, or preda- 
ceous beetles that may be desirous of attacking them. 

Amongst those which annoy their enemies by the emission of fluids 


1 Lesser, 1. i. 284. note 6. 2 De Araneis, 27. 

3 This gentleman is of opinion that spiders possess the means of re-dissolving their webs. 
He observed one, when its net was broken, run up its thread, and gathering a considerable 
mass of the web into a ball, suddenly dissolve it with fluid. He also observes, that when 
winding up a powerful prey, a spider can form its thread into a broad sheet. 

4 Jurine, Hymenopt. t. vi. f. 8. 5 De Geer, ii. 971. 

® I owe the knowledge of this circumstance to Mr. MacLeay. 


456 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


from their anus are the larger Carabi. ‘These, if, roughly handled, will 
Spirt to a considerable distance an acrid, caustic, stinking liquor, which if 
it touch the eyes or the lips occasions considerable pain.1—The rose- 
scented capricorn (Cerambyx moschatus) produced a similar effect upon 
Mr. Sheppard by similar means. The fluid in this had a powerful odor 
of musk.—The acid of ants has long been celebrated, and is one of their 
most powerful means of defence. When the species that have no sting 
make a wound with their jaws, they insinuate into it some of this acid, the 
effluvia produced by which are so subtile and penetrating, that it is impos- 
sible to hold your head near the nest of the hill-ant (Formica rufa), when 
the ants are much disturbed, without being almost suffocated. This odor 
thus proceeding from myriads of ants is powerful enough, it is said, to kill 
a frog, and is probably the means of securing the nest from the attack of 
many enemies.—Dr. Arnold observed a species of bug (Scutellera) 
abundant upon some polygamous plants which he could not determine, 
and in all their different states. 'They were attended closely by hosts of 
ants, and when disturbed emitted a very strong smell. One of these 
insects ejected a minute drop of fluid into one of his eyes, which occasion- 
ed for some hours considerable pain and inflammation. In the evening, 
however, they appeared to subside; but on the following morning the 
inflammation was renewed, became worse than ever, and lasted for three 
days. 

Other insects, when under alarm, discharge a fluid from the joints and 
segments of their body. You have often seen what has been called the 
unctuous or oil beetle (Meloe Proscarabeus), and I dare say, when you 
took it, have observed orange-colored or deep-yellow drops appear at its 
Joints. As these insects feed upon acrid plants, the species of crowfoot 
or Ranunculus, it is probable that this fluid partakes of the nature of their 
food, and is very acrimonious—and thus may put to flight its insect assail- 
ants or the birds, from neither of which it could otherwise escape, being 
a very slow and sluggish, and at the same time very conspicuous animal. 
Another beetle (Elenophorus collaris) has likewise this faculty—The 
lady-bird, we know, has been recommended as a cure for the tooth-ache. 
This idea may have taken its rise from a secretion of this kind being 
noticed upon it. I have observed that one species (Coccinella bipunctata), 
when taken, ejects from its joints a yellow fluid, which yields a powerful 
but not agreeable scent of opium.—Asilus crabroniformis, a dipterous 
insect, once when I took it, emitted a white milky fluid from its proboscis, 
the joints of the legs and abdomen, and the anus. ‘The common scorpion- 
fly (Raphidia ophiopsis) likewise, upon the same occasion ejects from its 
proboscis a brown and fetid drop.2 Some insects have peculiar organs 
from which their fluids issue, or are ejaculated. ‘Thus the larve of saw- 
flies, when taken into the hand cover themselves with drops, exuding 
from all parts of their body, of an unpleasant penetrating scent.2 That 
of Cimbex lutea, of the same tribe, from a small hole just above each 
spiracle, syringes a similar fluid in horizontal jets of the diameter of a 
thread, sometimes to the distance of more than a foot.A—The caterpillar 
of the great emperor moth (Saturnia Pavonia major) also spirts out, when 


1 De Geer, iv. 86. Geoff. i, 141. 
2 De Geer, ii. 734. 3 Reaumur, v. 96. 4 De Geer, ii. 937. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. A5T 


the spines that cover them are touched, clear lymph from its pierced tuber- 
cles.'—Willughby has remarked a curious circumstance with respect to a 
water-beetle (Acilius sulcatus), which ought not to be overlooked. A 
transverse line of a pale color is observable upon the elytra of the male ; 
where this line terminates certain oblong pores are visible, from which he 
affirms he has often seen a milky fluid exuding; and what may confirm 
his statement, I have more than once observed such a fluid issue from tHe 
male of this genus.—The caterpillar of the puss-moth (Cerura vinula), 
as well as those of several other species, has a cleft in the neck between 
the head and the first pair of legs. From this issues, at the will of the 
animal, a singular syringe, laterally bifid; the branches of which are ter- 
minated by a nipple perforated like the rose of a watering-pot. By 
means of this organ, when touched, it will syringe a fluid to a considerable 
distance, which, if it enters the eyes, gives them acute, but not lasting 
pain. The animal when taken from the tree on which it feeds, though 
supplied with its leaves, loses this faculty, with which it is probably en- 
dowed to drive off the ichneumons that infest it.2—And, to name no more, 
the great tiger-moth (Euprepia Caja), when in its last or perfect state, 
has near its head a remarkable tuft of the most brilliant carmine, from 
amongst the hairs of which, if the thorax be touched, some minute drops 
of transparent water issue, doubtless for some similar purpose.* 

The next active means of defence with which Creative Wisdom has 
endowed these busy tribes, are those limbs or weapons with which they 
are furnished. The insect lately mentioned, the puss-moth, besides the 
syringes just described, is remarkable for its singular forked tail, entirely 
dissimilar to the anal termination of the abdomen of most other caterpil- 
lars. This tail is composed of two long cylindrical tubes movable at 
their base, and beset with a great number of short stiff spines. When 
the animal walks, the two branches of the tail are separated from each 
other, and at every step are lowered so as to touch the plane of position ; 
hence we may conclude thag they assist it in this motion and supply the 
place of hind legs. If you touch or otherwise incommode it, from each 
of the above branches there issues a long, cylindrical, slender, fleshy, and 
very flexible organ of a rose color, to which the caterpillar can give every 
imaginable curve or inflection, causing it sometimes to assume even a 
spiral form. It enters the tube, or issues from it, in the same manner as 
the horns of snails or slugs. These tails form a kind of double whip, the 
tubes representing the handle, and the horns the thong or lash with which 
the animal drives away the ichneumons and flies that attempt to settle upon 
it. Touch any part of the body, and immediately one or both the horns 
will appear and be extended ; and the animal will, as it were, lash the 
spot where it feels that you incommode it. De Geer, from whom this 
account is taken, says that this caterpillar will bite very sharply.°—Several 
larve of butterflies, distinguished at their head by a semi-coronet of strong 
spines, figured by Madame Merian, are armed with singular anal organs®, 
which may have a similar use. Rdésel, when he first saw the caterpillar 
of the puss-moth, stretched out his hand with great eagerness, so he tells 
us, to take the prize; but when in addition to its grim attitude he beheld 


1 Rosel, iv. 162. De Geer, i. 273. 2 Rai. Hist. Ins. 94. n. 3. 3 De Geer, i. 324. 
4 Ibid. i. 208. 5 De Geer, i. 322. § Ins. Surinam. t. Vili, xxiii. xxxXxiii. 


39 


458 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


it dart forth these menacing catapults, v4 Heine ea might be poi- 
sonous organs, his courage failed bim. At length,"without touching the 
monster, he ventured to cut off the twig on which it was, and let it drop 


into a box!! The caterpillar of the gold-tail moth (Porthesia chrysorhea) 


has a remarkable aperture, which it can open and shut, surrounded by a 
rim on the upper part of each segment. ‘This aperture includes a little 
cavity, from which it has the power of darting forth small flocks of a cot- 
tony matter that fills it.2 This manceuvre is probably connected with our 
present subject, and employed to defend it from its enemies. It also 
ejects a fluid from its anus. 

There is a moth in New Holland, the larva of which annoys its foes 
in a different way: from eight tubercles in its back it darts forth, when 
alarmed, as many bunches of little stings, by which it inflicts very painful 
and venomous wounds.? 

The caterpillar of the moth of the beach (Stauropus Fagi), called the 
lobster, is distinguished by the uncommon length of its anteriorlegs. Mr. 
Stephens, an acute entomologist, relates to me that he once saw this 
animal use them to rid itself of a mite that incommoded it. ‘They are 
probably equally useful in delivering it from the ichneumon and its other 
insect enemies. Dr. Arnold has made a curious observation (confirmed 
by Dr. Forsstrém with respect to others of the genus) on the use of the 
long processes or tails that distinguish the secondary wings of Thecla 
Iarbas. These processes, he remarks, resemble antenne, and when the 
butterfly is sitting it keeps them in constant motion ; so that at first sight 
it appears to have a head at each extremity ; which deception is much 
increased by a spot resembling an eye at the base of the processes. 
These insects, perhaps, thus perplex or alarm their assailants. —Goedart 
pretended that the anal horn with which the caterpillars of so many hawk- 
moths (Sphingidie) are armed, answers the end of a sting instilling a dan- 
gerous venom: but the observations of modern entomologists have proved 
that this is altogether fabulous, since the animal has not the power of mov- 
ing them.* Their use is stil] unknown. 

Whether the long and often threatening horns on the head, the thorax, 
and even elytra, with which many insects are armed, are beneficial to 
them in the view under consideration, is very uncertain. They are fre- 
quently sexual distinctions, and have a reference probably rather to 
sexual purposes and the economy of the animal, than to any thing else. . 
They may, however, in some instances deter enemies from attacking 
them, and therefore it was right not to omit them wholly, though I shall 
not further enlarge upon them. Their mandibles or upper jaws, though 
principally intended for mastication,—and in the case of the Hymenop- 
tera, as instruments for various economical and mechanical uses,—are 
often employed to annoy their enemies or assailants. I once suffered 
considerable pain from the bite of the common water-beetle (Dytiscus 
marginalus),as well as from that of the great rove-beetle (Goerius olens) ; 
but the most tremendous and effectual weapon with which insects are 
armed—though this, except in the case of the scorpion, is also a sexual 
instrument, and useful to the females in oviposition—is their sting. With 


1}. iv. 122. 2 Reaum. ii, 155. t. vii. f, 4—7. 
3 Lewin’s Prodromus. 4 De Geer, i. 149. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 459 


this they keep not only the larger animals, but even man himself, in 
awe and at a distance. But on these I enlarged sufficiently in a former 
letter." 

These weapons, fearful as they are, would be of but little use to insects 
if they had not courage so employ them: in this quality, however, they 
are by no means deficient ; for, their diminutive size considered, they are, 
many of them, the most valiant animals in nature. The giant bulk 
of an elephant would not deter a hornet, a bee, or even an ant, from 
attacking it, if it was provoked. I once observed a small spider walking 
in my path. On putting my stick to it, it immediately turned round as 
if to defend itself. On the approach of my finger, it lifted itself up 
and stretched out its legs to meet it.—In Ray’s Letters mention is made 
of a singular combat between a spider and a toad fought at Hetcorne 
near Sittinghurst? in Kent; but as the particulars and issue of this famous 
duel are not given, I can only mention the circumstance, and conjecture 
that the spider was victorious !* ‘Terrible as is the dragon-fly to the 
insect world in general, putting to flight and devouring whole hosts of 
butterflies, May-flies, and others of its tribes, it instils no terror into the 
stout heart of the scorpion-Ay (Panorpa communis), though much its infe- 
rior in size and strength. Lyonnet saw one attack a dragon-fly of ten 
times its own bigness, bring it to the ground, pierce it repeatedly with its 
proboscis ; and had he not by ‘his eagerness parted them, he doubts not 
it would have. destroyed this tyrant of the insect creation.* 

When the death’s head hawk-moth was introduced by Huber into a 
nest of humble-bees, they were not affected by it, like the hive-bees, but 
attacked it and drove it out of their nest, and in one instance their stings 
proved fatal to it.2 A black ground-beetle devours the eggs of the mole 
cricket, or Gryllotalpa. To defend them, the female places herself at the 
entrance of the nest—which is a neatly smoothed and rounded chamber 
protected by labyrinths, ditches, and ramparts—and whenever the beetle 
attempts to seize its prey, she catches it and bites it asunder.° 

I know nothing more astonishing than the wonderful muscular strength 
of insects, which, in proportion to their size, exceeds that of any other 
class of animals, and is likewise to be reckoned amongst their means of 
defence. Take one of the common chafers or dung-beetles (Geotrupes 
stercorarius, or Copris lunaris) into your hand, and observe how he makes 
his way in spite of your utmost pressure; and read the accounts which 
authors have left us of the very great weights that a flea will easily move, 
as if a single man should draw a waggon with forty or fifty hundred weight 
of hay :—but upon this I shall touch hereafter, and therefore only hint at 
it now. 

We are next to consider the modes of concealment to which insects 
have recourse in order to escape the observation of their enemies. One 


icin Satine iy Pa ERR Sa, PERE a OPS 2 +> Di eee ee NE ae 

1 Mr. MacLeay relates to me, from the communications of Mr. E. Forster, the following 
particulars respecting the history of Mutilla coccinea, which from this account appears to be 
one of the most redoubtable of stinging insects. The females are most plentiful in Mary- 
land in the months of July and August, but are never very numerous. They are very 
active, and have been observed to take flies by surprise. A person stung by one of them 
lost his senses in five minutes, and was so ill for several days that his life was despaired of. 

2 Hedcorne near Sittingbourne. 3 Dr. Long in Ray’s Letters, 370. 

4 Lesser, |. i. 263. Note {. 5 Huber, Nouv. Obs. ii. 301. 

® Bingley, Animal Biogr. iii. lst Ed, 247. White, Nat. Hist. ii. 82. 


460 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


is by covering themselves with various substances. Of this description is 
a little water-beetle (Elophorus aquaticus), which is&lways found covered 
with mud, and so when feeding at the bottom of a pool or pond can 
scarcely be distinguished, by the predaceous aquatic insects, from the soil 
on which it rests. Another very minute insect of the same order (Lim- 
nius eneus) that is found in rivulets under stones and the like, sometimes 
conceals its elytra with a thick coating of sand, that becomes nearly as 
hard as stone. I never met with these animals so cireumstanced but once ; 
then, however, there were several which had thus defended themselves, 
and I can now show you a specimen.—A species of a minute coleopte- 
rous genus (Georyssus areniferus)', which lives in wet spots where the 
toad-rush (Juncus bufonius) grows, covers itself with sand ; and another 
nearly related to it (Chetophorus cretiferus K.) which frequents chalk, 
whitens itself all over with that substance. As this animal, when clean, 
is very black, were it not for this manceuvre, it would be too conspicuous 
upon its white territory to have any chance of escape from the birds and 
its other assailants—No insect is more celebrated for rendering itself 
hideous by a coat of dirt than the Reduvius personatus, a kind of bug 
sometimes found in houses. When in its two preparatory states, every 
part of its body, even its legs and antennz, is so covered with the dust of 
apartments, consisting of a mixture of particles of sand, fragments of wool 
or silk, and similar matters, that the animal at first would be taken for one 
of the ugliest spiders. This grotesque appearance is aided and increased 
by motions equally awkward and grotesque, upon which I shall enlarge 
hereafter. If you touch it with a hair-pencil or a feather, this clothing 
will soon be removed, and you may behold the creature unmasked, and 
in its proper form. It is an insect of prey; and amongst other victims 
will devour its more hateful congener the bed-bug.? Its slow movements, 
combined with its covering, seem to indicate that the object of these 
manceuvres is to conceal itself from observation, probably, both of its 
enemies and of its prey. It is therefore properly noticed under my present 
head. 

As Hercules, after he had slain the Nemean lion, made a doublet of its 
skin, so the larva of another insect (Hemerobius chrysops, a lace-winged 
fly with golden eyes) covers itself with the skins of the luckless Aphides 
that it has slain and devoured. From the head to the tail, this pigmy 


1 In former editions of this work this insect was stated to be synonymous with Trox dubius 
of Panzer, which it much resembles, except in the sculpture of the prothorax (Fa. Ins. Germ. 
Init. \xii, t. 5.) ; but as SchOnherr and Gyllenhal, who had better means of ascertaining 
the point, regard Georyssus pygmaeus Latr. as Panzer’s insect, the reference is now omitted. 
G. areniferus differs considerably from G. pygmaeus, as described by Gyllenhal (Insect. Suec. 
I. iii. 675.) The front is not rugulose, the vertex is channeled, the antenne shorter than 
the head; the prothorax is rather shining, marked anteriorly with several excavations, in 
the middle of which is a channel forming a reversed cross with a transverse impression. 
Mr. Westwood remarks that the earth with which this insect is coated cannot be for con- 
cealment, as above stated, because it is but rarely found so covered, and only when it has 
by chance found its way into soft muddy ground. (Mod. Class. of Ins. i. 119.) My own 
observations, however, lead to the different conclusion given-above. I remember as if yes- 
terday, though thirty-six years since, the surprise with which I saw creeping in a moist 
(but not watery) sand-pit at Elloughton, near Hull, when entomologizing, scores of what 
seemed little moving masses of sand, and my delight on finding the, to me, new and singu- 
lar insect which was concealed beneath; and as I afterwards repeatedly found the same 
insect in similar situations, invariably coated with sand (not earth), and never without this 
covering, I cannot think this circumstance accidental. 

2 De Geer, ili. 283. Geoff. Hist. Ins. i. 437. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 461 


destroyer of the helpless is defended by a thick coat, or rather mountain 
composed of the skins, limbs, and down of these creatures. Reaumur, 
in order to ascertain how far this covering was necessary, removed it, and 
put the animal into a glass, at one time with a silk cocoon, and at another 
with raspings of paper. In the first instance, in the space of an hour it 
had clothed itself with particles of the silk: and in the second, being 
again laid bare, it found the paper so convenient a material, that it made 
of it a coat of unusual thickness." 

Insects in general are remarkable for their cleanliness ;—however filthy 
the substances which they inhabit, yet they so manage as to keep themselves 
personally neat, Several, however, by no means deserve this character : 
and I fear you will scarcely credit me when I tell you that some shelter 
themselves under an umbrella formed of their own excrement! You will 
exclaim, perhaps, that there is not a parallel case in all nature ;—it may 
be so ;—yet as I am bound to confess the faults of insects as well as to 
extol their virtues, 1 must not conceal from you this opprobrium. Beetles 
of three different genera are given to this Hottentot habit. The first to 
which I shall introduce you is one that has long been celebrated under 
the name of the beetle of the lily (Crioceris merdigera, Cantaride de’ 
Giglh Vallisn.). The larve of this insect have a very tender skin, which 
appears to require some covering from the impressions of the external air 
and from the rays of the sun; and it finds nothing so well adapted to 
answer these purposes, and probably also to conceal itself from the birds, 
as its own excrement, with which it covers itself in the following manner. 
Its anus is remarkably situated, being on the back of the last segment of 
the body, and not at or under its extremity, as obtains in most insects. 
By means of such a position, the excrement when it issues from the body, 
instead of being pushed away and falling, is lifted up above the back in 
the direction of the head. When entirely clear of the passage, it falls, 
and is retained, though slightly, by its viscosity. The grub next, by a 
movement of its segments, conducts it from the place where it fell to the 
vicinity of the head. It effects this by swelling the segment on which 
the excrement is deposited, and contracting the following one, so that it 
necessarily moves that way. Although, when discharged, it has a longi- 
tudinal direction, by the same action of the segments the animal contrives 
to place every grain transversely. Thus, when laid quite bare, it will 
cover itself in about two hours. There are often many layers of these 
grains upon the back of the insect, so as to form a coat of greater diam- 
eter than its body. When it becomes too heavy and stiff, it is thrown 
off, and a new one begun.2—The larve of the various species of the 
tortoise-beetles (Cassida L.) have all of them, as far as they are known, 
similar habits, and are furnished besides with a singular apparatus, by 
means of which they can elevate or drop their stercorarious parasol so as. 
most effectually to shelter or shade them. The instrument by which they 
effect this is an anal fork, upon which they deposit their excrement, and 
which in some is turned up and lies flat upon their backs ; and in others 
forms different angles, from very acute to very obtuse, with their body ; 
and occasionally is unbent and in the same direction with it. In some 

1 Reanm. iii. 391. 


® Reaum. iii. 220. Compare Vallisnieri, Esperienz. ed Osservaz. 195. Ed. 1726. 
3 Reaum, 233, 
39* 


462 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


species the excrement is not so disgusting as you may suppose, being 
formed into fine branching filaments. This is the ease with C. maculata 
L.1—In the cognate genus Imatidium, the larve also are merdigerous ; 
and that of I. Leayanum Latr., taken by Major-General Hardwicke in 
the East Indies, also produces an assemblage of very long filaments, that 
resemble a dried fucus or a filamentous lichen. The clothing of the Tinea, 
clothes-moths, and others, and also of the case-worms, having enlarged 
upon in a former letter, I need not describe here. 

Some insects, that they may not be discovered and become the prey of 
their enemies when they are reposing, conceal themselves in flowers. 
The male of a little bee (Hertades? Campanularum), a true Sybarite, 
dozes voluptuously in the bells of the different species of Campanula—in 
which, indeed, I have often found other kinds asleep. Linné named 
another species florisomnis on account of a similar propensity. A third, 
a most curious and rare species (Andrena® spinigera), shelters itself when 
sleeping, at least I once found it there so circumstanced, in the nest-like 
umbel of the wild carrot. You would think it a most extraordinary freak 
of nature, should any quadruped sleep suspended by its jaws (some birds, 
however, are said, I think, to have such a habit, and Sus Babyroussa one 
something like it),—yet insects do this occasionally. Linné informs us 
that a little bee (Epeolus’ variegatus) passes the night thus suspended 
to the beak of the flowers of Geranium pheum: and I once found one 
of the vespiform bees (Nomada* G'oodeniana) lianging by its mandibles 
from the edge of a hazel-leaf, apparently asleep, with its’ limbs relaxed 
and folded. On being disengaged from its situation it became perfectly 
lively. 

There is no period of their existence in which insects usually are less 
able to help themselves, than during that intermediate state of repose 
which precedes their coming forth in their perfect forms. I formerly 
explained to you how large a portion of them during this state cease to 
be locomotive, and assume an appearance of death. In this helpless 
condition, unless Providence had furnished them with some means of 
security, they must fall an easy prey to the most insignificant of their 
assailants. But even here they are taught to conceal themselves from 
their enemies by various and singular contrivances. Some seek for safety 
by burying themselves, previously to the assumption of the pupa, at a 
considerable depth under the earth; others bore into the heart of trees, or 
into pieces of timber; some take their residence in the hollow stalks of 
plants: and many are concealed under Jeaves, or suspend themselves in 
dark places, where they cannot readily be seen. But in this state they 
are not only defended from harm by the situation they select, but also by 
the covering in which numbers envelop themselves; for, besides the 
leathery case that defends the yet tender and unformed imago, many of 
these animals know how to weave for it a costly shroud of the finest 
materials, through which few of its enemies can make their way ;—and 
to this curious instinct, as I long since observed, we owe one of the most 
valuable articles of commerce, the silk that gives lustre to the beauty of 
our females. These shrouds are sometimes double. Thus the larve of 


} Kirby in Linn. Trans. iii. 10. ® Apis. **. c. 2. y. K. % Melitta, **. c. K. 
4 Apis. **, b. K. 5 Apis. b. *. K. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 463 


certain saw-flies spin for themselves a cocoon of a soft, flexible, and close 
texture, which they surround with an exterior one composed of a strong 
kind of net-work, which withstands pressure like a racket. Here nature 
has provided that the inclosed animal shall be protected by the interior 
cocoon from the injury it might be exposed to from the harshness of the 
exterior, while the latter by its strength and tension prevents it from being 
hurt by any external pressure. ° 

But of all the contrivances by which insects in this state are secured 
from the'r enemies, there is none more ingenious than that to which the 
May-flies (Trichoptera) have recourse for this purpose. You have heard 
before that these insects are at first aquatic, and inhabit curious. cases 
made of a variety of materials, which are usually open at each end. 
Since they must reside in these cases, when they are become pupa, till 
the time of their final change approaches, if they are left open, how are 
the animals, now become torpid, to keep out their enemies ? Or, if they 
are wholly closed, how is the water, which is necessary to their respira- 
tion and life, to be introduced? These sagacious creatures know how to 
compass both these ends at once. They fix a grate or portcullis to each 
extremity of their fortress, which at the same time keeps out intruders 
and admits the water. These grates they weave with silk spun from 
their anus into strong threads, which cross each other, and are not soluble 
in water. One of them, described by De Geer, is very remarkable. It 
consists of a small, thickish, circular lamina of brown silk, becoming as 
hard as gum, which exactly fits the aperture of the case, and is fixed a 
little within the margin. It is pierced all over with holes disposed in 
concentric circles, and separated by ridges which go from the centre to 
the circumference, but often not quite so regularly as the radii of a circle 
or the spokes of awheel. These radii are traversed again by other ridges, 
which follow the direction of the circles of holes; so that the two kinds 
of ridges crossing each other form compartments, in the centre of each of 
which is a hole.” 

Under this head I shall call your attention to another circumstance that 
saves from their enemies innumerable insects :—I mean their coming forth 
for flight or for food only in the night, and taking their repose in various 
places of concealment during the day. ‘The infinite hosts of moths 
(Phalena L.)—amounting in this country to more than a thousand spe- 
cies—with few exceptions, are all night-fliers. And a considerable pro- 
portion of the other orders—exclusively of the Hymenoptera and Diptera, 
which are mostly day-fliers—are of the same description. One of the 
well-known whirlwigs or water-fleas, Gyrinus (Orectocheilus villosus), 
differs from its congeners, according to the observations of M. Robert, in 
running along the surface of the water only at night, hiding itself under 
stones on the banks by day. Many larve of moths also come out only 
in the night after theit food, lying hid all day in subterraneous or other 
retreats. Of this kind is that of Fumea pulla and Nycterobius, whose 
proceedings have been before described. ‘The caterpillar of another moth 
(Noctua subterranea F.) never ascends the stems of plants, but remains, 


1 Reaum. v. 100. 2 Reaum. iii. 170. De Geer, ii. 519. 545. 
3 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, iv. bull. |xxx. 


e 


464 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 


a true Troglodyte, always in its cell under ground, biting the stems, at 
their base, which falling bring thus their foliage within its reach.? 

The habitations of insects are also usually places of retreat, which 
secure them from many of their enemies: but I have so fully enlarged 
upon this subject on a former occasion, that it would be superfluous to do 
more than mention it here. 

I am now to lay before you some examples of the contrivances, requir- 
ing skill and ingenuity, by which our busy animals occasionally defend 
themselves from the designs and attack of their foes. Of these I have 
already detailed to you many instances, which I shall not here repeat ; 
my history therefore will not be very prolix. I observed in my account 
of the societies of wasps, that they place sentinels at the mouth of their 
nests. The same precaution is taken by the hive-bees, particularly in the 
night, when they may expect that the great destroyers of their combs, 
Galleria mellonella and its associates, will endeavor to make their way 
into the hive. Observe them by moonlight, and you will see the senti- 
nels pacing about with their antenne extended, and alternately directed 
to the right and left. In the mean time the moths flutter round the 
entrance ; and it is curious to see with what art they know how to profit 
of the disadvantage that the bees, which cannot discern objects but in a 
strong light, labor under at that time. But should they touch a moth 
with these organs of nice sensation, it falls an immediate victim to their 
just anger. The moth, however, seeks to glide between the sentinels, 
avoiding with the utmost caution, as if she were sensible that her safety 
depended upon it, all contact with their antenna. These bees upon 
guard in the night are frequently heard to utter a very short low hum ; 
but no sooner does any strange insect or enemy touch their antenne than 
the guard is put into a commotion, and the hum becomes louder, resem- 
bling that of bees when they fly, and the enemy is assailed by workers from 
the interior of the hive.? 

To defend themselves from the death’s-head hawk-moth, they have 
recourse to a different proceeding. In seasons in which they are annoyed 
by this animal, they often barricade the entrance of their hive by a 
thick wall made of wax and propolis. This wall is built immediately 
behind and sometimes in the gateway, which it entirely stops up; but it 
is itself pierced with an opening or two sufficient for the passage of one 
or two workers. These fortifications are occasionally varied: sometimes 
there is only one wall, as just described, the apertures of which are in 
arcades, and placed in the upper part of the masonry. At others many 
little bastions, one behind the other, are erected. Gateways masked by 
the anterior walls, and not corresponding with those in them, are made in 
the second line of building. ‘These casemated gates are not constructed 
by the bees without the most urgent necessity. When their danger is 
present and pressing, and they are as it were compelled to seek some 
preservative, they have recourse to this mode of defence®, which places 
the instinct of these animals in a wonderful light, and shows how well 
they know how to adapt their proceedings to circumstances. Can this be 


1 Fab, Ent. Syst. Em. iii. 70. 200. * Huber, Nouv. Obs. ii. 412. 
3 Huber, Nouv. Obs. ii. 294. 


MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 465 


merely sensitive? When attacked by strange bees, they have recourse 
to a similar manceuvre ; only in this case they make but narrow apertures, 
sufficient for a single bee to pass through.—Pliny affirms that a sick 
bear will provoke a hive of bees to attack him in order to let him blood. 
What will you say, if humble-bees have recourse to a similar manceuvre ? 
It is related to me by Dr. Leach from the communications of Mr. Daniel 
Bydder—an indefatigable and well-informed collector of insects, and 
observer of their proceedings—that Bombus® terrestris, when laboring 
under Acariasis from the numbers of a small mite (Gamasus Gymnoptero- 
rum) that infest it, will take its station in an ant-hill; where beginning to 
scratch, and kick, and make a disturbance, the ants immediately come out 
to attack it, and falling foul of the mites, they destroy or carry them all 
off; when the bee, thus delivered from its enemies, takes its flight. 

In this long detail, the first idea that will, I should hope, strike the 
mind of every thinking being, is the truth of the Psalmist’s observations— 
that the tender mercies of God are over all his works. Not the least and 
most insignificant of his creatures is, we see, deprived of his paternal care 
and attention ; none are exiled from his all-directing providence. Why 
then should man, the head of the visible creation, for whom all the infe- 
rior animals were created and endowed; for whose well-being, in some 
sense, all these wonderful creatures with their miraculous instincts, whose 
history I am giving you, were put in action,—why should he ever doubt, 
if he uses his powers and faculties rightly, that his Creator will provide 
him with what is necessary for his present state ?—Why should he imagine 
that a Being, whose very essence is Love, unless he compels him by his 
own willful and obdurate wickedness, will ever cut him off from his care 
and providence? 

Another idea that upon this occasion must force itself into our mind is, 
that nothing is made in vain. When we find that so many seemingly 
trivial variations in the color, clothing, form, structure, motions, habits, 
and economy of insects are of very great importance to them, we may safely 
conclude that the peculiarities in all these respects, of which we do not 
yet know the use, are equally necessary ; and we may almost say, revers- 
ing the words of our Saviour, that not a hair is given to them without our 
Heavenly Father. 

Iam, &e. 


1 Hist. Nat.1. viii. c. 36. 2 Apis. **, e. 2. K. 


466 


LETTER XXII. 
MOTIONS OF INSECTS. (Larva and pupa.) 


Amonest the means of defence to which insects have recourse, I have 
noticed their motions. ‘These shall be the subject of the present letter. 
I shall not, however, confine myself to those by which they seek to 
escape from their enemies; but take a larger and more comprehensive 
survey of them, including’ not only every species of locomotion, but also 
the movements they give to different parts of their body when in a state 
of repose: and in order to render this survey more complete, I shall add 
to it some account of the various organs and instruments by which they 
move. 

Whenever you go abroad in summer, wherever you turn your eyes and 
attention, you will see insects in motion. They are flying or sailing 
every where in the air; dancing in the sun or in the shade; creeping 
slowly, or marching soberly, or running swiftly, or jumping upon the 
ground ; traversing your path in all directions; coursing over the surface 
of the waters, or swimming at every depth beneath; emerging from a 
subterranean habitation, or going into one; climbing up the trees, or 
descending from them; glancing from flower to flower ; now alighting upon 
the earth and waters, and now leaving them to follow the impulse of 
their various instincts ; sometimes traveling singly; at other times in count- 
less swarms: these the busy children of the day, and those of the night. 
If you return to your apartment—there are these ubiquitaries—some fly- 
ing about—others pacing against gravity up the walls or upon the ceil- 
ing—others walking with ease upon the glass of your windows, and some 
even venturing to take their station on your own sacred person, and assert- 
ing their right to the lord of the creation. 

This universal movement and action of these restless little animals, 
gives life to every part and portion of our globe, rendering even the most 
arid desert interesting. From their visitations every leaf and flower 
becomes animated ; the very dust seems to quicken into life, and the stones, 
like those thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha, to be metamorphosed into 
locomotive beings. In the variety of motions which they exhibit, we 
see, as Cuvier remarks', those of every other description of animals. 
They walk, run, and jump with the quadrupeds; they fly with the birds ; 
they glide with the serpents; and they swim with the fish. And the pro- 
vision made for these motions in the structure of their bodies is most won- 
derful and various. ‘If I was minded to expatiate,” says the excellent 
Derham, “I might take notice of the admirable mechanism in those that 
creep; the curious oars in those amphibious insects that swim and walk ; 
the incomparable provision made in the feet of such as walk or hang upon 
smooth surfaces; the great strength and spring in the legs of such as 


1 Anatom. Compar. i. 444. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. - 467 


leap; the strong-made feet and talons of such as dig; and, to name no 
more, the admirable faculty of such as cannot fly, to convey themselves 
with speed and safety, by the help of their webs, or some other artifice, to 
make their bodies lighter than the air.”? 

Since the motions, and instruments of motion, of insects are usually 
very different in their preparatory states, from what they are in the 
imago or perfect state, I shall, therefore, consider them separately, and 
divide my subject into—motions of larve, motions of pupe, and motions 
of perfect insects. 


I. Amongst larve there are two classes of movers ; Apodous larve, or 
those that move without legs, and Pedate larve, or those that move by 
means of legs. I must here observe, that by the term legs, which I use 
strictly, I mean only jointed organs, that have free motion, and can walk 
or step alternately ; not those spurious legs without joints, that have no 
free motion, and cannot walk or take alternate steps; such as support 
the middle and anus of the larve of most Lepidoptera and saw-flies 
(Serrifera). 

Apodous larve seldom have occasion to take long journeys ; and many 
of them, except when. about to assume the pupa, only want to change 
their place or posture, and to follow their food in the substance, whether 
animal or vegetable, to which, when included in the egg, the parent insect 
committed them. Legs, therefore, would be of no great use to them, and 
to these last aconsiderable impediment. They are capable of three kinds 
of motion; they either walk, or jump, or swim. I use walking in an 
improper sense, for want of a better term equally comprehensive: for 
some may be said to move by gliding, and others (I mean those that, 
fixing the head to any point, bring the tail up to it, and so proceed) by 
stepping. 

The motion of serpents was ascribed by some of the ancients (who 
were unable to conceive that it could be effected naturally, unless by the 
aid of legs, wings, or fins,) to a preternatural cause. It was supposed to 
resemble the “ incessus deorum,” and procured to these animals, amongst 
other causes, one of the highest and most honorable ranks in the emble- 
matical class of their false divinities.2 Had they known Sir Joseph 
Banks’s discovery, that some serpents push themselves along by the points 
of their ribs, which Sir E. Home found to be curiously constructed for this 
purpose, their wonder would have been diminished, and their serpent-gods 
undeified. But though serpents can no longer make good their claim to 
motion more deorum, some insects may take their places; for there are 
numbers of larve that having neither legs, nor ribs, nor any other points 
by which they can push themselves forward on a plane, glide along by 
the alternate contraction and extension of the segments of their body. 
Had the ancient Egyptians been aware of this, their catalogue of insect 
divinities would have been wofully crowded. In this annular motion, the 
animal alternately supports each segment of the body upon the plane of 
position, which it is enabled to do by the little bundles of muscles attached 
to the skin, that take their origin within the body.® 


1 Physico- Theol. Ed. 13. 363. 2 Encycl. Brit., art. Physiology, 709. 
3 Cuvier, Anat. Comp. i. 430. 


468 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


I shall begin the list of walkers, the movements of which are aided 
by various instruments, with one which is well kiown to most people, 
—the grub of the nut-weevil (Balaninus Nucum). When placed 
upon a table, after lying some time, perhaps, bent in a bow, with its head 
touching its tail, at last it begins to move, which, though in no certain 
direction, it does with more speed than might be expected. Résel fancied 
that this animal had feet furnished with claws; but in this, as De Geer 
justly observes, he was altogether mistaken, since it has not the least 
rudiment of them, its motion being produced solely by the alternate con- 
traction and extension of the segments of the body, assisted, perbaps, by 
the fleshy prominences of its sides. Other larve have this annular motion 
aided by a slimy secretion, which gives them further hold upon the plane 
on which they are moving, and supplies in some degree the place of legs 
or claws. That of the weevil of the common figwort (Cionus Scrophu- 
larie) is always covered with slime, which enables it, though it renders 
its appearance disgusting, to walk with steadiness, by the mere lengthening 
and shortening of its segments, upon the leaves of that plant. Of this 
kind, also, are those larve, mentioned above, received by De Geer from 
M. Ziervogel, which, adhering to each other by a slimy secretion, glide 
along so slowly upon the ground as to be a quarter of an hour in going 
the breadth of the hand, whence the natives call their bands Gards-drag.* 

As a further help, others again call in the assistance of their unguiform 
mandibles. These, which are peculiar to grubs with a variable membra- 
naceous, or rather retractile head®, especially those of the fly tribe (Mus- 
cide), when the animal does not use them, are retracted not only within 
the head, but even within the segments behind it*; but when it is moving, 
they are protruded, and lay hold of the surface on which it is placed. 
They were long ago noticed by the accurate Ray. ‘This blackness in 
the head,” says he, speaking of the maggot of the common flesh-fly, ‘is 
caused by two black spines or hooks, which when in motion it puts forth, 
and fixing them in the ground, so drags along its body.”® The larve of 
the aphidivorous flies (Sceva, &c.), the ravages of which amongst the 
Aphides I have before described to you, transport themselves from place 
to place in the same way, walking by means of their teeth. Fixing their 
hind part to the substances on which they are moving, they give their 
body its greatest possible tension; and, if I may so speak, thus take as 
long a step as they can: next, laying hold of it with their mandibles, by 
setting free the tail, and relaxing the tension, the former is brought near 
the head. Thus the animal proceeds, and thus will even walk upon glass.® 
Some grubs, as those of the lesser house-fly (Anthomyia canicularis), have 
only one of these claw-teeth ; and in some they have the form as well as 
the office of legs.7_ Bonnet mentions an apodous larva, that, before it can 
use its mandibles, is obliged to spin, at certain intervals, little hillocks or 
steps of silk, of which it then lays hold by them, and so drags itself along. 

Besides their mandibular hooks, some of these grubs supply the want 
of legs by means of claws at their anus. Thus that of the flesh-fly, 


1 De Geer, v. 210. 2 Ibid. vi. 338. 
3 See MacLeay in Philos. Mag. &c. N. Ser. No. 9. 178. 
4 De Geer, vi. 65. 5 Hist. Ins. 270. 6 Reaummr, iii. 369. 


, ; % ra vi. 76. Reaumur, iv. 376. Swamm. Bidl. Nat. Ed. Hill, ii. 46. a. t. xxxix. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 469 


‘ 
Ray tells us in the place just quoted, pushes itself by the protruded spines 
of its tail. The larva, also, of a long-legged gnat (Limnobia replicata), 
which in that state lives in the water, is furnished with these anal claws, 
which, in conjunction with its annular tension and relaxation, and the 
hooks of its mouth, assist it in walking over the aquatic plants.! 

A remarkable difference, according to their station, obtains in the bots 
of gad-flies (stride) ; those that are subcutaneous (Cuticole Clark) 
having no unguiform mandibles ; while those that are gastric (Gastricole 
Clark), and those that inhabit the maxillary sinuses of animals (Cavicole 
Clark), are furnished with them. In this we evidently see Creative Wis- 
dom adapting means to their end, for the cuticular bots having no plane 
surface to move upon, and imbibing a liquid food, in them the mandibular 
hooks would be superfluous. But they are furnished with other means 
by which they can accomplish such motions, and in contrary directions, 
as are necessary to them ; the anterior part of each segment being beset 
with numbers of very minute spines, not visible except under a strong 
magnifier, sometimes arranged in bundles, which all look towards the 
anus ; and the posterior part is, as it were, paved with similar hooks, but 
smaller, which point to the head. Thus we may conceive, when the 
animal wants to move- forward, that it pushes itself by the first set of 
hooks, keeping the rest, which would otherwise impede motion in that 
direction, pressed close to its skin, or it may depress that part of the seg- 
ment, and when it would move backwards that it employs the second.2 
The other descriptions of bots, not being embedded in the flesh, but fixed 
to a plane, are armed with the mandibles in question, by which they can 
not only suspend themselves in their several stations, but likewise, with 
the aid of the spines with which their segments also are furnished, move 
at their pleasure.? Other larve of flies, as well as the bots, are furnished 
with spines or books—by which they take stronger hold—to assist them 
in their motions. Those mentioned in my last letter as inhabiting the 
nests of humble-bees, besides the six radii that arm their anus, and which, 
perhaps, may assist them in locomotion, have the margin of their body 
fringed with a double row of short spines, which are, doubtless, useful in 
the same way. 

The next order of walkers amongst apodous larve are those that move 
by means of fleshy tuberculiform or pediform prominences,—which last 
resemble the spurious legs of the caterpillars of most Lepidoptera. Some, 
a kind of monopods, have only one of such prominences, which being 
always fixed almost under the head, may serve, in some degree, the pur- 
pose of an unguiform mandible. The grub of a kind of gnat (Chiro- 
nomus stercorarius), and also another, probably of the Tipularian tribe 
(found by De Geer in a subputrescent stalk of Angelica, which he was 
unable to trace to the fly), have each a fleshy leg on the underside of the 
first segment, which points towards the head and assists them in their 
motions.* Others again go a little further, and are supported at their 


1 De Geer, vi. 355. 

2 Reaum. iv. 416, t. xxxvi.f.5. Comp. Clark On the Bots, &c. 48. 

* Mr. Clark (ibid. 62.) observed only rough points on the bots of the sheep, but these also 
have spines or hooks looking towards the anus, Reaum, iv. 556. t. xxxv. f. 11. 13. 15. I 
also observed them myself in the same grub. 

* De Geer, vi. t. xxii. f. 15. i. t. xviii. £8. p. 


40 


470 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


anterior extremity by a pair of spurious legs. An aquatic larva of a most 
singular form, and of the same tribe, figured by Redtmur, is thus cireum- 
stanced. In this case the processes in question proceed from the head, 
and are armed with claws. Would you think it—another Tipularian 
grub is distinguished by three legs of this kind? It was first noticed by 
De Geer under the name of Tipula maculata (Tanypus monilis Meig.), 
who gives the following account of its motions and their organs :—lt is 
found, he observes, in the water of swampy places and in ditches, is not 
bigger than a horse-hair, and about a quarter of an inch in length. Its 
mode of swimming is like that of a serpent, with an undulating motion 
of the body, and it sometimes walks at the bottom of the water, and upon 
aquatic plants. ‘The most remarkable part of it are its legs, called by 
Latreille, but it should seem improperly, tentacula. They resemble, by 
their length and rigidity, wooden legs. The anterior leg is attached to 
the underside, but towards the head, of the first segment of the body. It 
is long and cylindrical, placed perpendicularly or obliquely, according to 
the different movements the animal gives it, and terminates in two feet, 
armed at their extremity by a coronet of long moveable hooks. These 
feet, like the tentacula of snails, are retractile within the leg, and even 
within the body, so that only a little stump, as it were, remains without. 
The insect moves them both together, as a lame man does his crutches, 
either backwards or forwards. ‘The two posterior legs are placed at the 
anal end of the body. ‘They are similar to the one just described, but 
larger, and entirely separate from each other, being not, like them, retrac- 
tile within the body, but always stiff and extended. ‘These also are armed 
with hooks. In walking, this larva uses these two legs much as the cater- 
pillars of the moths, called Geometre, do theirs. By the inflection of the 
anus it can give them any kind of lateral movement, except that it can 
neither bend nor shorten them, since like a wooden leg, as I have before 
observed, they always remain stiff and extended.” Lyonet bad observed 
this larva, or a species nearly related to it; but he speaks of it as having 
four legs, two before and two behind. Probably, when he examined them, 
the common base, from which the feet are branches, was retracted within 
the body. 

Generally speaking, however, in these apodous walkers the place of 
legs is supplied by fleshy and often retractile mamille or tubercles. By 
means of these and a slimy secretion, unaided by mandibular hooks, the 
caterpillar of a little moth (Apoda Testudo) moves from place to place.‘ 
A subcutaneous larva belonging to the same order, that mines the leaves 
of the rose, moves also by tubercular legs assisted by slime. It has 
eighteen homogenous legs, with which, when removed from its house of 
concealment, it will walk well upon any surface, whether horizontal, 
inclined, or even vertical.° But the greatest number of legs of this kind 
that distinguish any known larva is to be observed in that of a two-winged 
fly (Sceva Pyrastri) that devours the Aphides of the rose. This animal 
has six rows of tubercular feet, with which it moves, each row consisting 


1 Reaum. v. t. vi. f.5. m. m. 

2 De Geer, vi. 395. Mr. W.S. MacLeay is of opinion that these legs are pedunculated 
spiracles (Philos. Mag. N. Series, No. 9. 178); but it is evident from De Geer’s account 
that the animal uses them as legs, and like legs they are armed with hooks or claws. 

3 Lesser, 1. i. 96. notef. 4 Klemann, Beitrage, 324. © De Geer, i. 447. t. xxxi. f. 17. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. A471 


~ of seven, making in all forty-two.! The grub of the weevil of the dock 
(HAypera Rumicis) has twenty-four tubercular legs; but, what is remark- 
able, the six anterior ones, being longer than the rest, seem to represent 
the real legs, while the others represent the spurious ones, of Jepidopterous 
larve. These legs, however, are all fleshy tubercles, and have no claws, 
the place of which is supplied by slime which covers all the underside of 
the body, and hinders the animal from falling. Another weevil (Lixus 
paraplecticus) produces a grub inhabiting the water-hemlock, which has 
only six tubercles that occupy the place and are representatives of the 
legs of the perfect insect.® 

Some larve have these tubercles armed with claws. The maggot of a 
fly described by De Geer (Volucella plumata) has six pair of them, each 
of which has three Jong claws. This animal has a radiated anus, and 
seems related to those flies that live in the nests of humble-bees.* 

Insects, in the peculiarities of their structure,,as we have seen in many 
instances, sometimes realize the wildest fictions of the imagination. Should 
a traveler tell you that he had seen a quadruped whose legs were on its 
back, you would immediately conclude that he was playing upon your 
credulity, and had lost all regard to truth. What then will you say to 
me, when I affirm, upon the evidence of two most unexceptionable wit- 
nesses, Reaumur and De Geer, that there are insects which exhibit this 
extraordinary structure? The grub of a little gall-fly, appearing to be 
Cynips Quercus inferus of Linné, which inhabits a ligneous gall resembling 
a berry to be met with on the underside of oak-leaves, was found by the 
former to have on its back, on the middle of each segment, a retractile 
fleshy protuberance that resembled strikingly the spurious Jegs of some 
caterpillars. A little attention will convince any one, argues Reaumur, 
that the legs of insects circumstanced like the one under consideration, if 
it has any, should be on its back. For this grub, inhabiting a spherical 
cavity, in which it lies rolled up as it were in a ring, when it wants to 
move, will be enabled to do so, in this hollow sphere, with much more 
facility, by means of legs on the middle of its back, than if they were in 
their ordinary situation. So wisely has Providence ordered every thing. 
Another similar instance is recorded by De Geer, which indeed had pre- 
viously been noticed, though cursorily, by the illustrious Frenchman.® 
There is a little larva, he observes, to be found at all seasons of the year, 
the depth of winter excepted, in stagnant waters, which keeps its body 
always doubled as it were in two, against the sides of ditches or the stalks 
of aquatic plants. If it is placed in a glass half full of water, it so fixes 
itself against the sides of it, that its head and tail are in the water while 
the remainder of the body is out of it; thus assuming the form of a 
siphon, the tail end being the longest. When this animal is disposed to 
feed, it lifts its head and places it horizontally on the surface of the water, 
so that it forms a right angle with the rest of the body, which always 
remains in a situation perpendicular to'the surface. It then agitates, with 
vivacity, a couple of brushes, formed of hairs and fixed in the anterior part 


of the head, which, producing a current towards the mouth, it makes its 
ee eee eS ae eee 
1 De Geer, vi. 111. ® Ibid. v. 233. 3 Ibid. v. 228. 
4 Ibid. vi. 137. t. viii. f. 8, 9. 5 Reaum. iii. 496. t. xlv. f. 3. 
6 Ibid. Mém. de Acad. Roy. des Sciences de Paris, An. 1714. p. 203. 


A72 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


meal of the various species of animalcula, abounding in stagnant waters, 
that come within the vortex thus produced. As th€se animals require to 
be firmly fixed to the substance on which they take their station, and their 
back is the only part, when they are doubled as just described, that can 
apply to it,—they are furnished with minute legs armed with black claws, 
by which they are enabled to adhere to it. They have ten of these legs: 
the four anterior ones, which point towards the head and are distant from 
each other, are placed upon the fourth and fifth dorsal segments of the 
body ; and the six posterior ones, which point to the anus and are so near — 
to each other as at first to look like one leg, are placed on the eighth, ninth, 
and tenth. When the animal moves, the body continues bent, and the 
sixth segment, which is without feet, and forms the summit of the curve, 
goes first." De Geer named the fly it produces Tipula amphibia: it 
seems not clear, from his figure, to which of the modern genera of the 
Tipularia it belongs ; nor is it referred to by Meigen. 

1 come now to the jumping apodes ; and one of this description will 
immediately occur to your recollection,—that I mean which revels in our 
richest cheeses, and produces a little black shining fly (Tyrophaga Caset). 
These maggots have long been celebrated for their saltatorious powers. 
They effect their tremendous leaps—laugh not at the term, for they are 
truly so compared with what human force and agility can accomplish— 
in nearly the same manner as salmon are stated to do when they wish to 
pass over a cateract, by taking their tail in their mouth, and letting it go 
suddenly. When it prepares to leap, our larva first erects itself upon its 
anus, and then bending itself into a circle by bringing its head to its tail, 
it pushes forth its unguiform mandibles, and fixes them in two cavities in 
its anal tubercles. All being thus prepared, it next contracts its body into. 
an oblong, so that the two halves are parallel to each other. ‘This done, 
it lets go its bold with so violent a jerk that the sound produced by its 
mandibles may be readily heard, and the leap takes place. Swammerdam 
saw one, whose length did not exceed the fourth part of an inch, jump in 
this manner out of a box six inches deep ; which is as if a man six feet 
high should raise himself in the air by jumping 144 feet! He had seen 
others leap a great deal higher. The grub of a little gnat lately noticed 
(Chironomus stercorarius) has a similar faculty, though executed in a 
manner rather different. These larve, which inhabit horse-dung, though 
deprived of feet, cannot move by annular contraction and dilatation ; but 
are able, by various serpentine contortions, aided by their mandibles, to 
move in the substance which constitutes their food. Should any accident 
remove them from it, Providence has enabled them to recover their natural 
station by the power I am speaking of. When about to leap, they do not, 
like the cheese-fly, erect themselves so as to form an angle with the plane 
of position; but lying horizontally, they bring the anus near the head, 
regulating the distance by the length of the leap they mean to take; 
when fixing it firmly, and then suddenly resuming a rectilinear position, 
they are carried through the air sometimes to the distance of two or three 
inches. ‘They appear to have the power of flattening their anal extremity, 


' De Geer, vi. 380. t. xxiv. f. 1—9. Mr. Westwood refers this insect to the modern genus 
Dizxa. (Mod. Class. ii. p. 527.) > 
? Swamm. Bibl. Nat. Ed. Hill, ii. 64. b. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 473 


and even of rendering it concave: by means of which it may probably 
act as a sucker, and so be more firmly fixable.! The grub of a fly, whose 
proceedings in that state I have before noticed (Leptis Vermileo), will, 
when removed from sits habitation, endeavor to recover it by leaping. 
Indeed this mode of motion seems often to be given to this description of 
larve by Providence, to enable them to return to their natural station, 
when by any accident they have wandered away from it. ’ 

Many apodous larve inhabit the water, and therefore must be furnished 
with means of locomotion proper to that element. ‘To this class belongs 
the common gnat (Culex pipiens), which, being one of our greatest tor- 
ments, compels us to feel some curiosity about its history. Its larva is a 
very singular creature, furnished with a remarkable anal apparatus for 
respiration, by which it usually remains suspended at the surface of the 
water. If disposed to descend, it seems to sink by the weight of its body ; 
but when it would move upwards again, it effects its purpose by alternate con- 
tortions of the upper and lower halves of it, and thus it moves with much 
celerity. The lamine or swimmers, which terminate its anus®, are doubtless 
of use to it in promoting this purpose. It does not, that I ever observed, 
move in a lateral direction, but only from the surface downwards, and 
vice versd.—Another dipterous larva (Corethra culiciformis), which much 
resembles that of the enat in form, differs from it in its motions and station 
of repose; for, instead of being suspended at the surface with its head 
downwards, it usually, like fishes, remains in a horizontal position in the 
middle of the water. When it ascends to the surface, it is always by 
means of a few strokes of its tail, so that its motion is not equable, sed 
per saltus. It descends again gradually by its own weight, and regains its 
equilibrium by a single stroke of the tail.3—A well-known fly (Stratyomis 
Chameleon), in its first state an aquatic animal, often remains suspended, 
by its radiated anus, at the surface of the water, with its head downwards. 
But when it is disposed to seek the bottom or to descend, by bending the 
radii of its tail so as to form a concavity, it includes in them a bubble of 
air, in brilliancy resembling silver or pearl ; and then sinks with it by its own 
weight. When it would return to the surface it is by means of this bub- 
ble, which is, as it were, its air-balloon. If it moves upon the surface or 
horizontally, it bends its body alternately to the right and left, contracting 
itself into the form of the letter S; and then extending itself again into 
a straight line, by these alternate movements it makes its way slowly in 
the water.‘ 

I have dwelt longer upon the apodous larve, or those that are without 
what may be called proper legs, analegous to those of perfect insects, 
because the abscence of these ordinary instruments of motion is in num- 
bers of them supplied in a way so remarkable and so worthy to be known ; 
and because in them the wisdom of the Creator is so conspicuously, or, I 
should rather say, so strikingly manifested, since it is, doubtless, equally 
conspicuous in the ordinary routine of nature. But aberrations from her 
general laws, and modes, and instruments of action, often of rare occurrence, 
impress us more forcibly than any thing that falls under our daily obser- 
vation. 


1 De Geer, vi. 389. 2 Reaum. iv. t. 43. f. 3. nn. 
3 De Geer, vi. 375. t. xxiii. f. 4, 5. 4 Swamm. Bibi. Nat. Ed. Hill, ii. 44. b. 47. a. 


40* 


474 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


I come now to pedate larve, or those that move by means of proper or 
articulate legs. These legs (generally six in number§ and attached to the 
underside of the three first segments of the body) vary in larve of the 
different orders: but they seem in most to have joints answering to the 
hip (cova) ; trochanter; thigh (femur) ; shank (tibia) ; foot (tarsus), of 
perfect insects, the legs of which they include. Cuvier, speaking of 
Coleoptera and some Neuroptera, mentions only three joints. But many 
in these orders (amongst which he included the Trichoptera) have the 
joints I have enumerated. ‘To name no more, the Lamellicornia, Dytisct, 
Silpha, Staphylini, Cicindele, and Gyrini, &c. amongst coleopterous 
larve ; and the Trichoptera, as well as the Libellulina and Ephemerina, 
amongst Cuvier’s Neuroptera,—have these joints, and in many theslast 
terminates in a double claw.'! In some coleopterous genera the tarsus 
seems absent or obsolete. The larva of the lady-bird (Coccinella) affords 
an example of the former kind, and that of Chrysomela of the latter.? 
These joints are very visible in the legs of caterpillars of Lepidoptera, 
and their tarsus is armed with a single claw.? The larve that have these 
legs walk with them sometimes very swiftly. In stepping they set forward 
at the same time the anterior and posterior legs of one side, and the inter- 
mediate one of the other; and so alternately on each side. 

Pedate-larve are of two descriptions ; those that to perfect legs add 
spurious ones with or without claws, and those that have only perfect legs. 
I begin with the former—those that have both kinds of legs. But first 
I must make a few remarks upon spurious legs. Because their muscles, 
instead of the horny substance that protects them in perfect legs, are cov- 
ered only by a soft membrane, they have been usually denominated mem- 
branaceous legs ; since, however, they are temporary, vanishing altogether 
when the insect arrives at its perfect state,—are merely used, for they do 
not otherwise assist in this motion, as props to hinder its long body, when 
it walks, from trailing on the ground ; to push against the plane of posi- 
tion; and, by means of their hooks or claws, to fix itself firmly to its sta- 
tion when it feeds or reposes,—I shall therefore call them prolegs (prope- 
des’). These organs consist of three or four folds, and are commonly 
terminated, though not always, by a coronet or semicoronet of very minute 
crooked claws or hooks. These claws, which sometimes amount to nearly 
a hundred on one proleg, are alternately longer and shorter. They are 
crooked at both ends, and are attached to the proleg by the back by means 
of a membrane, which covers about two thirds of their length, leaving 
their two extremities naked. Of these the upper one is sharp, and the 
lower blunt. The sole, or part of the prolegs within the claws, is capable 
of opening and shutting. When the animal walks, that they may not 
impede its motion, it is shut, and the claws are laid flat with their points 
inwards ; but when it wishes to fix itself, the sole is opened, becoming of 


1 For examples of larve having these joints, see De Geer, iv. 289. t. xiii. f. 20. t. xv. f 
Pat. Xi. f. 3. t. xvi Root. xixef. 4, de. 

2 Lbid. iv. t. xi. f. UL. text. 9,0. 

3 Lyonet, Tr. Anat. t. iii. f. 8. 

4 Mr. W. S. MacLeay, where quoted above, objects to this term; but as the organs in 
question are generally given to the animal to assist in its motions, and have been universally 
regarded as a kind of legs, it was judged best, for the sake of distinction, to give thema 
different name from perfect legs, and at the same time one that showed some affinity to 
them. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS, 475 


greater diameter than before, and the claws stand erect with their points 
outwards. ‘Thus they can lay stronger hold of the plane of position.! 

The number of these prolegs varies in different species and families. 
In the numerous tribes of saw-flies (Serrifera), the larve of which resem- 
ble those Lepidoptera, and are called by Reaumur spurious caterpillars 
(fausses chenilles), one family (Lophyrus) has sixteen prolegs ; a second 
(Hylotoma, &c.) fourteen; another (Tenthredo I.) twelve; and a fourth 
(Lyda) none at all, having only the six perfect legs. ‘The majority of 
larve of Lepidoptera have ten prolegs, eiyht being attached, a pair on each, 
to the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth segments of the body, and two to 
the twelfth or anal segment.? The caterpillar of the puss-moth (Cerura 
Vinula) and some others, instead of the anal prolegs, have two tails or 
horns. A hemigeometer, described by De Geer, has only six intermediate 
prolegs, the posterior pair of which are longer than the rest, to assist the 
anal pair in supporting the body in a posture more or less erect. Other 
hemigeometers, of which kind is the larva of Plusta Gamma, have only 
six prolegs, four intermediate and two anal. ‘The true geometers or sur- 
veyors (Geometre) have only two intermediate and two anal prolegs. 
Many grubs of Coleoptera, especially those of Staphylinide, Silphide, 
&c., which are long and narrow, are furnished with a stiff joint at the 
anus, which they bend downwards and use as a prop to prevent their 
body from trailing. This joint, though without claws, may be regarded 
as a kind of proleg, which supports them when they walk’; and probably 
may assist their motion by pushing against the plane of position. 

With respect to the larve that have only perfect legs, having just given 
you an account of these organs, I have nothing more to state relating to 
their structure. I shall therefore now consider the motions of pedate 
larve, under the several heads of walking or running, jumping, climbing 
and swimming. 

Amongst those that walk, some are remarkable for the slowness of 
their motion, while others are extremely swift. The caterpillar of the hawk- 
moth of the Filipendula (Zygena Filipendule) is of the former descrip- 
tion, moving in the most leisurely manner ; while that of Apatela lepo- 
rina, a moth unknown in Britain, is named after the hare, from its great 
speed. The caterpillar of another moth, the species of which seems not 
to be ascertained, is celebrated by De Geer for the wonderful celerity of 
its motions. When touched it darts away backwards as well as forwards, 
giving its body an undulating motion with such force and rapidity, that it 
seems to fly from side to side.® Cuvier observes, that the grubs of some 
coleopterous and neuropterous insects, which have only the six perfect 
legs, by means of them lay hold of any surrounding object, and, fixing 
themselves to it, drag the rest of their body to that point ; and that those 
of many capricorn beetles and their affinities (but that of Callidium viola- 
ceum is an apode®) have these legs excessively minute and almost nothing ; 
that they move in the sinuosities which they bore by the assistance of 
their mandibles, with which they fix themselves, and also of several dorsal 
and ventral tubercles, by which they are supported against the sides of 

1 Lyonet, 82. t. iii. f. 10—16. 2 Ibid. t. i. f. 4. 

3 De Geer, i. 379. t. xxv. f. 1. 3. : 


4 De Geer, i. 12. 40. t. i. f. 27. q.t. vi. f. ll. e. 
5 De Geer, i. 424. ® Kirby in Linn. Trans. v. 258. 


476 , MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


their cavity, and push themselves along, in the same manner as a chimney- 
sweeper—by the pressure of his knees, elbows, shoulder-blades, and other 


prominent parts—pushes himself up a chimney.’ The larve of the ant- . 


lion (Myrmelion), with the exception of one species, which moves in 
the common way, always walks backwards, even when its legs are cut 
off. 

The jumpers, amongst pedate larve, as far as they are known, are not 
very numerous, and will not detain you long. When the caterpillar of 
Lithosia Quadra, a moth not uncommon, would descend from one 
branch or leap to another, it approaches to the edge of the leaf on which 
it is stationed, bends its body together, and retiring a little backwards, 
as if to take a good situation, leaps through the air, and, however high the 
jump, alights on its legs like a cat. That of another moth (Herminia 
rostralis) will also leap to a considerable height.? 

Another species of motion, which is peculiar to larve,—their mode I 
mean of climbing,—as it merits particular attention, will occupy more 
time. I have already related so many extraordinary facts in their history, 
that I promise myself you will not disbelieve me if I assert that insects 
either use ladders for this purpose, or a single rope. You may often 
have seen the caterpillar of the common cabbage-butterfly climbing up 
the walls of your house, and even over the glass of your windows. 
When next you witness this last circumstance, if you observe closely the 
square upon which the animal is traveling, you will find that, like a 
snail, it leaves a visible track behind it. Examine this with your micro- 
scope, and you will see that it consists of little silken threads, which it 
has spun in a zigzag direction, forming a rope-ladder, by which it ascends 
a surface it could not otherwise adhere to. ‘The silk as it comes from the 
spinners is a gummy fluid, which hardens in the air; so that it has no 
difficulty in making it stick to the glass. Many caterpillars that feed 
upon trees, particularly the geometers, have often occasion to descend 
from branch to branch, and sometimes, especially previously to assuming 
the pupa, to the ground. Had they to descend by the trunk, supposing 
them able to traverse with ease its rugged bark, what a circuitous route 
must they take before they could accomplish their purpose! Providence, 
ever watchful over the welfare of the most insignificant of its creatures, 
has gifted them with the means of attaining these ends, without all this 
labor and loss of time. From their own internal stores they can let 
down a rope, and prolong it indefinitely, which will enable them to 
travel where they please. Shake the branches of an oak or other tree 
in summer, and its inhabitants of this description, whether they 
were reposing, moving, or feeding, will immediately cast themselves 
from the leaves on which they were stationed; and however sudden 
your attack, they are nevertheless still provided for it, and will all 
descend by means of the silken cord just alluded to, and hang suspended 
in the air. Their name of geometer was given to a large division of 
the caterpillars which have this power of descending by silken threads, 
because they seem to measure the surface they pass over, as they walk, 
with achain. If you place one upon your hand, you will find that they 


draw a thread as they go; when they move, their head is extended as. 


4 Anatom. Comp. i. 430. 2 Rosel, I. iv. 112. vi. 14. 
ip , 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. ATT 


far as they can reach with it; then fastening their thread there, and 
bringing up the rest of their body, they take another step; never moving 
without leaving this clue behind them; the object of which, however, is 
neither to measure, nor to mark its path that it may find it again; but 
thus, whenever the caterpillar falls or would descend from a leaf, it has 
a cord always ready to support it in the air, by lengthening which it can 
with ease reach the ground. Thus it can drop itself without dangér 
from the summit of the most lofty trees, and ascend again by the same 
road. As the silky matter is fluid when it issues from the spinners, it 
should seem as if the weight of the insect would be too great, and its 
descent too rapid, so as to cause it to fall with violence upon the earth. 
The little animal knows how to prevent such an accident, by descending 
gradually. It drops itself a foot or half a foot, or even less, at a time ; 
then making a longer or shorter pause, as best suits it, it reaches the ground 
at last without a shock. From hence it appears that these larve 
have power to contract the orifice of the spinners, so as that no more of 
the silky gum shall issue from it; and to relax it again when they intend 
to resume their motion downwards: consequently there must be a mus- 
cular apparatus to enable them to effect this, or at least a kind of sphinc- 
ter, which, pressing the silk, can prevent its exit. From hence also it 
appears that the gummy fluid which forms the thread must have gained a 
degree of consistence even before it leaves the spinner, since as soon as 
it emerges it can support the weight of the caterpillar. In ascending, 
the animal seizes the thread with its jaws as high as it can reach it; and 
then elevating that part of the back that corresponds with the six perfect 
legs, till these legs become higher than the head, with one of the last pair 
it catches the thread; from this the other receives it, and soa step is 
gained: and thus it proceeds till it has ascended to the point it wishes to 
reach. At this time if taken it will be found to have a packet of thread, 
from which, however, it soon disengages itself, between the two last pairs 
of perfect legs.1_ To see hundreds of these little animals pendent at the 
same time from the boughs of a tree, suspended at different heights, some 
working their way downwards and some upwards, affords a very amusing 
spectacle. Sometimes, when the wind is high, they are blown to the 
distance of several yards from the tree, and yet maintain: their threads 
unbroken. I witnessed an instance of this last summer, when numbers 
were driven far from the most extended branches, and looked as if they 
were floating in the air. 

Having related to you what is peculiar in the motions of pedate larve 
upon the earth and in the air, I must next say something with respect to 
their locomotive powers in the water. Numbers of this description inhabit 
that element. Amongst the beetles, the genera Dyticus, Hydrophilus, 
Gyrinus, Limnius, Parnus, Heterocerus, Elophorus, Hydrena, &c. amongst 
the bug tribes, Gerris, Velia, Hydrometra, Notonecta, Sigara, Nepa, 
Ranatra, Naucoris; a few Lepidoptera ; the majority of Trichoptera ; 
Libellula, Aeshna, Agrion, Sialis, Ephemera, &c. amongst the Neuroptera ; 
Culex and many of the Tipularie Latr. from the dipterous insects ; and 
from the Aptera, Atax, some Podure, and many of the Oniscide, &c. 
All these, in their larva state, are aquatic anirnals. 


1 Reaum, ii. 375. 


478 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


The motions of these creatures in this state are various. Some walk 
on the ground under water ; some move in mid-wafer, either by the same 
motion of the legs as they use in walking, or by strokes, as in swimming ; 
others for this purpose employ certain laminez, which terminate their tails, 
as oars; others again swim like fish, with an equable motion; some move 
by the force of the water which they spirt from their anus; others again 
swim about in cases, or crawl over the submerged bottom ; and others 
walk even on the surface of the water. I shall not now enlarge on all 
these kinds of water-motion, since many will come under consideration 
hereafter. 

There are two descriptions of larve of Hidrophilide, one furnished with 
swimmers or anal appendages, by means of which they are enabled to swim ; 
the other have them not, and hence are not able to rise from the bottom.! 
The larve of Dytisct, by means of these natatory organs, will swim, though 
slowly, and every now and then rise to the surface for the sake of respira- 
tion. Those of Ephemera, when they swim, apply their legs to the body, 
and swiin with the swiftness and motions of fish. Those of the true May- 
Aly (Stalis lutaria), on the contrary, use their legs in swimming, and at 
the same time, by alternate inflections, give to their bodies the undulations 
of serpents.? But the larve of certain dragon-flies (Aeshna and Libellula) 
will afford you the most amusement by their motions. These larve com- 
monly swim very little, being generally found walking at the bottom on 
aquatic plants: when necessary, however, they can swim well, though in 
a singular manner. If you see one swimming, you will find that the body 
is pushed forward by strokes, between which an interval takes place. The 
legs are not employed in producing this progressive motion, for they are 
then applied close to the sides of the trunk, in a state of perfect inaction. 
But it is effected by a strong ejaculation of water from the anus. When 
I treat upon the respiration of insects, I shall explain to you the apparatus 
by which these animals separate the air from the water for that purpose ; 
in the present case it is subsidiary to their motions, since it is by drawing 
in and then expelling the water that they are enabled to swim. To see 
this, you have only to put one of these larve into a plate with a little water. 
You will find that, while the animal moves forward, a current of water is 
produced by this pumping in a contrary direction. As the larva, between 
every stroke of its internal piston, has to draw in a fresh supply of water, 
an interval must of course take place between the strokes. Sometimes it 
will lift its anus out of the water, when a long thread of water, if I may 
so speak, issues from it.* 


II. Iam next to say something upon the motions of insects in their 
pupa state. This is usually to our little favorites a state of perfect repose ; 
but, as I long since observed, there are several that, even when become 
pup, are as active and feed as rapaciously as they do when they are 
either larve or perfect insects. The Dermaptera, Orthoptera, Hemiptera, 
many of the Neuroptera, and the majority of the Aptera, are of this 
description. With respect to their motions, we may therefore consider 
pupe as of two kinds—active pupe, and quiescent pupe. 


1 Miger, Ann. du Mus. xiv. 441. 2 De Geer, ii. 621. 3 Ibid. 725. 
* De Geer, ii. 675. Compare Reaum. vi. 393. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 479 


The motions of most insects whose pup are active are so similar in all 
their states, except where the wings are concerned, as not to need any 
separate account. JI shall therefore request you to wait for what I have 
to say upon them, till I enter upon those of the imago. One insect, how- 
ever, of this kind, moving differently in its preparatory states, is entitled 
to notice under the present head. In alate letter, I mentioned to you a bug 
(Reduvius personatus), which usually covers itself with a mask of dust, 
and fragments of various kinds, cutting a very grotesque figure. Its awk- 
ward motions add not a little to the effect of its appearance. When so 
disposed, it can move as well and as fast as its congeners; yet this does 
not usually answer its purpose, which is to assume the appearance of an 
inanimate substance. It therefore hitches along in the most leisurely 
manner possible, as if it was counting its steps. Having set one foot 
forwards (for it moves only one leg at a time), it stops a little before it 
brings up its fellow, and so on with the second and third legs. It moves 
its antenne in a similar way, striking, as it were, first with one, and then, 
after an interval of repose, with the other! The pupz of gnats also, as 
well as those of many other aquatic Diptera, retain their locomotive 
powers, not, however, the free motion of their limbs. When not engaged 
in action, they ascend to the surface by the natural levity of their bodies, 
and are there suspended by two auriform respiratory organs in the anterior 
part of the trunk, their abdomen being then folded under the breast ; 
when disposed to descend the animal unfolds it, and by sudden strokes 
which she gives with it and her anal swimmers to the water, she swims to 
the right and left as well as downwards, with as much ease as the larva.” 

Bonnet mentions a pupa which climbs up and down in its cocoon,— 
and that of the common glow-worm (Lampyris noctiluca) will sometimes 
push itself along by the alternate extension and contraction of the seg- 
ments of its body.? Others turn round when disturbed. That of a 
weevil (Hypera arator), which spins itself a beautiful cocoon like fine gauze, 
and which it fixes to the stalks of the common spurrey (Sagina arvensis), 
upon my touching this stalk, whirled round several times with astonishing 
rapidity. The chrysalis of a moth (Hypogymna dispar) when touched 
truns round with great quickness; but, as if fearful of breaking the thread 
by which it is suspended by constantly twisting it in one direction, it per- 
forms its gyrations alternately from left to right and from right to left.4 
Generally speaking, quiescent pupe when disturbed show that they have 
life, by giving their abdomen violent contortions. 

But the most extraordinary motion of pupe is jumping. In the year 
1810 I received an account from a very intelligent young lady, who col- 
lected and studied insects with more than common ardor and ability, that 
a friend had brought her a chrysalis endued with this faculty. Jt was 
scarcely a quarter of an inch in length; of an oval form; its color was a 
semi-transparent brown, with a white opake band round the middle. It 
was found attached, by one end, to the leaf of a bramble. It repeatedly 
jumped out of an open pill-box that was an inch in height. When put 
into a drawer in which some other insects were impaled, it skipped from 
side to side, passing over their backs for nearly a quarter of an hour with 


1 De Geer, iii. 284. ? Ibid. vi. 308. 3 Ibid. iv. 43. 
* Dumeril, Trait. Elément. ii. 49. n. 603. 4 


480 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


surprising agility. Its mode of springing seemed tg be by balancing itself 
upon one extremity of its case. About the end of October one end of 
the case grew black, and from that time the motion ceased; and about 
the middle of April, in the following year, a very minute ichneumon made 
its appearance by a hole it had made at the opposite end. Some time 
after I had received this history, I happened to have occasion to look at 
Reaumur’s Memoir upon the enemies of caterpillars, where I met with an 
account of a similar jumping chrysalis, if not the same. Round the nests 
of the caterpillar of the processionary moth, before noticed, he found 
numerous little cocoons suspended by a thread three or four inches long 
to a twig or a leaf, of a shortened oval form, and close texture, but so as 
the meshes might be distinguished. These cocoons were rather transpa- 
rent, of a coffee-brown color, and surrounded in the middle by a whitish 
band. When put into boxes or glasses, or laid on the hand, they sur- 
prised him by leaping. Sometimes their leaps were not more than ten 
lines, at others they were extended to three or four inches, both in height 
and length. When the animal leaps, it suddenly changes its ordinary 
posture (in which the back is convex and touches the upper part of the 
cocoon, and the head and anus rest upon the Jower), and strikes the upper 
part with the head and tail, before its belly, which then becomes the con- 
vex part, touches the bottom. This occasions the cocoon to rise in the 
air to a height proportioned to the force of the blow. At first sight this 
faculty seems of no great use to an animal that is suspended in the air ; 
but the winds may probably sometimes place it in a different and unsuita- 
ble position, and lodge it upon a leaf or twig: in this case it has it in its 
power to recover its natural station. Reaumur could not ascertain the fly 
that should legitimately come from this cocoon’, for different cocoons gave 
different flies: whence it was evident that these ichneumons were infested 
by their own parasite.2 This might be the case with that of the lady 
just mentioned. Perhaps, properly speaking, in this last instance the 
motions ought rather to be regarded as belonging to a larva; but as it had 
ceased feeding, and had inclosed itself in its cocoon, I consider it as belong- 
ing to the present head. : 

You may probably here feel some curiosity to be informed how the nu- 
merous larve that are buried in their pupa state, either in the heart of trees, 
under the earth, or in the waters, effect their escape from their various 
prisons and become denizens of the air, especially as you are aware that each 
is shrouded in a winding-sheet and cased in a coffin. In most, however, if 
you examine the coffin closely, you will see nesuRGAM written upon it. 
What I mean is this. The pupariam, or case of the animal, is furnished 
with certain acute points (adminicula), generally single, but in some in- 
stances forked, looking towards the anus, and usually placed upon trans- 
verse ridges on the back of the abdomen, but sometimes arming the sides 
or the margins of the segments. By this simple contrivance, aided by 
new-born vigor, when the time for its great change is arrived, the included 
prisoner of hope, if under ground, pushes itself gradually upwards, till 
reaching the surface its head and trunk emerge, when an opening in the 


» Mr. Westwood states that it belongs to the genus Perilitus, belonging to the Ichneu- 
monidx. See Mod. Class. Ins. ii. p. 149. for further notices upon it. 
* Reaum. ii. 450. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 481 


latter being effected by its efforts, it escapes from its confinement, and once 
more tastes the sweets of liberty and the joys of life. Those that are 
inclosed in trees and spin a cocoon, are furnished with points on the head, 
with which they make an opening in the cocoon. The pupa of the great 
goat-moth (Cossus ligniperda) thus, by divers movements, keeps disen- 
gaging itself from this envelope, till it arrives at a hole in the tree which. 
it had made when a caterpillar ; when its anterior part having emerged, if 
stops short, and so.escapes a full that might destroy it. After some repose, 
in consequence of very violent efforts, it bursts through the front of the 
puparium, and thus escapes from its prison.? 

The insects of the Trichoptera order, or case-worm flies, are quiescent 
when they first assume the pupa, but become locomotive towards the close 
of their existence in that state. Since they inhabit the water when they 
become pup, Providence has furnished them with the means of quitting 
that fluid without injury, when they are to exchange it for the air, which 
in their winged state is their proper sphere of action. I have before 
described to you the grates which shut up their cases when they become 
quiescent; if they had no means of piercing these grates, they would 
perish in the waters. ‘The head of these pupz is provided at first with a 
' particular instrument, which enables them to effect this purpose ; its ante- 
rior part is armed with a_ pair of hooks in form resembling the beak of-a 
bird ; and with this, previously to their last change, they make an opening 
in the grate which, though it once defended, now confines them. But at 
this moment, perhaps, the insect has a considerable space of water to rise 
through before she can reach the surface. This is all wisely provided for ; 
before she leaves the envelop which covers her body, she emerges from 
the water, and fixes herself upon some plant or other object, the summit 
of which is not overflowed. But you will here, perhaps, ask—How can 
a pupa in her envelop, with all her limbs set fast, do this? This affords 
another instance of the wise provision of the beneficent Father of the 
universe for the welfare of his creatures. ‘The antenne and legs of this 
tribe of insects, when they are pupz, are not included, as is the case with 
most that are quiescent in that state, in the general envelop ; but each m 
a separate one, so as to allow it free motion. ‘Thus the insect when the 
time is come for its last change can use them (except the hind-legs, which 
being partly covered by the wing-cases remain without motion) with ease. 
It then stretches out its antenne, and steering with its legs makes for the 
surface. De Geer saw one just escaped from its case run and swim with 
surprising agility over the bottom of a saucer, in which he had put some 
cases of these flies ; and at last when he held a piece of stick to it, it got 
upon it, and having emerged from the water, prepared to cast its envelop. 
It is remarkable, that the envelop of the intermediate tarsi, like the poste- 
rior ones of Dytisci, is fringed on one side with hairs, to enable the insects 
to use them as swimming feet®, while those neither of the larva nor imago 
are so circumstanced. 


Lam, &c. 


2 Lyonet, Trait. Anat. 15. * De Geer, ii. 518, 
41 ' 


482 


LETTER XXIII. 
MOTIONS OF INSECTS. (Imago.) 


IIf. Tue motions of insects in their perfect or emago state are various, 
and for various purposes ; and the provision of organs by which they are 
enabled to effect them is equally diversified and wonderful. It will be 
conyenient to divide this: multifarious subject ; I shall therefore consider 
their motions under two principal heads :—motions of insects reposing— 
_and motions of insects in action ;—and this last head I shall further sub- 

divide into motions whose object is change of place, and sportive motions. 


The first of these, motions of insects reposing’, will not detain us long. 
The most remarkable is that of the long-legged gnats or crane-flies (Tip- 
ule). When at rest upon any wall or ceiling, sometimes standing upon 
four legs, and sometimes upon five, you may observe them elevate and 
depress their body alternately. This oscillating movement is produced by 
the weight of their body and the elasticity of their legs, and is constant 
and uninterrupted during their repose. Unless it be connected'with the 
respiration of the animal, it is not easy to say what is the object of it. 
Moths, when feeling the stimulus of desire, or under alarm, set their whole 
body into a tremor.’ A living specimen of the hawk-moth of the willow 
being once brought me, upon placing it upon my hand, after ejecting a 
milky fluid from its anus, it put its wings and body in a most rapid vibra- 


tion, which continued more than a minute, when it flew away. A: butter- 
fly, called by Aurelians “ The large skipper” (Hesperia sylvanus), when 
it alights, which it does very often, for they are never Jong on the wing, 
always turns half-way round ; so that, if it settles with its head from you, 
it turns it towards you. s 

Others of the motions in question are merely those of parts. Butter- 


flies, when standing still in the sun, as you have doubtless often observed, 
“ Their. golden pinions ope and close ; ” 


thus, it should seem, unless this motion be connected with their respiration, 
alternately warming and cooling their bodies. You have probably noticed 
a very common little fly, of a shining black, with a black spot at the end 
of its wings (Setopiera vibrans*). It has received its trivial name 
(vibrans) from the constant vibration which, when reposing, it imparts to 
its wings. This motion, also, I have reason to think, assists its respiration. 
Some insects when awake are very active with their antenne, though their 
bodies are at rest. I remember one evening attending for some time to 
the proceedings of one of those caseworm-flies (Leptocerus), that are 


1 Peck in Linn. Trans. xi. 92. 
* Meigen considers this as an Ortalis ; but its peculiar habit of constantly vibrating its 
wings indicates a distinct genus; especially as the habit is not confined to a single species. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 483 


remarkable, like certain moths, for their long antenna. It was perched 
upon a blade of grass, and kept moving these organs, which were twice as 
long as itself, in all directions, as if by means of them it was exploring 
every thing that occurred in its vicinity. Many Tipul, and likewise some 
mites (Acarus vibrans and Gamasus motatorius), distinguished by long 
anterior legs, from this circumstance denominated pedes motatort: by Linné, 
holding them up in the air impart to them a vibratory motion, resembling 
that of the antenne of some insects.!_ I scarcely need mention, what must 
often have attracted your attention, the actions of flies when they clean 
themselves ; how busily they rub and wipe the head and thorax with their 
fore legs, and their wings and abdomen with their hind ones. Perhaps 
you are not equally aware of the use to which the rove-beetles (Staphyli- 
nus L.) put their long abdomen. They turn it over their back not only 
to put themselves in a threatening attitude, as I lately related, but also to 
fold up their wings with it, and pack them under their short elytra. 

With respect to the motions of insects in action, they may be subdivided, 
as was just observed, into motions whose object is change of place—and 
sportive motions. 

The locomotions of these animals are walking, ruaning, jumping, climb- 
ing, flying, swimming, and burrowing. I begin with the walkers. 

~The mode of their walking depends upon the number and kind of their 
legs. With regard to these, insects may be divided into four classes; viz. 
Hexapods, or those that have only. siz legs; such are those of every order 
except the Aptera of Linné, of which only three or four genera belong to 
this class :—-Octopods, or those that have eight legs, including tbe tribes 
of mites (Acarina) ; spiders (Aranetd@) ; long-legged spiders (Phalan- 
gtide); and scorpions (Scorpionide) :—Polypods, or, those that have 
fourteen legs, consisting of the wood-lice tribe (Oniscide) ;—and Myria- 
pods, or those that have more than fourteen legs—often more than a bun- 
dred—composed of the two ‘tribes of centipedes (Scolopendride) and 
millepedes (Julidz). The first of these classes may be denominated 
proper, and-the rest improper insects. ‘The legs-of. all seem to consist of 
the same general parts ; the hip, trochanter, thigh, shank, and foot; the 
‘four first being usually without joints (though in the Araneide, &c. the 
shank has two), and the foot having from one to above forty.” 

In walking and running, the hexapods, like the larve that have perfect 
legs, move the anterior and posterior leg of one side and the intermediate 
of the other alternately, as 1 have often witnessed. De Geer, however, 
affirms that they advance each pair of legs at the same time*; but this is 
contrary to fact, and indeed would make their ordinary motions, instead of 
walking and running, a kind of canter and, gallop. Whether those that 


1 De Geer, vi. 335. 

2 The most common number of joints inthe tarsus is from two to five; but the Phalan- 
gide have sometimes more than forty. In these, under a lens, this part looks like’a jointed 
antenna. \ ' ; 

Geoffroy, and after him most modern entomologists, has taken the primary divisions of 
the Coleoptera order from the number of joints in the tarsus; but this, although perhaps in 
the majority of cases it may afford a natural division, will not universally. For—not to 
mention the instance of Pselaphus, clearly belonging tothe Brachyptera—both Oxytelus Grav., 
and another genus that I have separated from it (Carpalimus K. Ms.), have only two joints 
in their tarsi. In this tribe, therefore, it can only be used for secondary divisions.—K. 

3 De Geer, iii, 284. 


we 


484 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


have more than six feet move in this way, which isnot improbable, from 
the difficulty of attending at the same time to the movements of so many 
members, is not easily ascertained. 

The dog-tick (Ivodes Ricinus), if when young and active it moves in 
the same way that it does when swoln to an enormous size with blood, 
seems to afford an exception to the mode of walking just described. It 
first uses, says Ray, its two anterior legs as antenne to feel out its way, 
and then fixing them, brings the next pair beyond them, which being also 
fixed, it takes a second step with the anterior, and so drags its bloated 
carcass along.’ Redi observes that when scorpions walk they use those 
remarkable comb-like processes at the base of their posterior legs to assist 
them in their motions, extending them and setting them out from the body, 
as if they were wings: and his observation is confirmed by Amoreux, who 
calls them ventral swimmers.? I have often noticed a millepede (Julus 
terrestris), frequently found under the bark of trees, and where there is 
not a free circulation of air, the motions of which are worthy of attention. 
Observed at a little distance, it seems to glide over the surface, like a ser- 
pent, without legs; but a nearer inspection shows how its movement is 
accomplished. Alternate portions of its numerous Jegs are extended 
beyond the line of the body, so as to form an obtuse angle with it; while 
those in the intervals preserve a vertical direction. So that, as long as it 
keeps moving, little bunches of the Jegs are alternately in and out from 
one end to the other of its long body ; and an amusing sight it is to see 
the undulating line of motion successively beginning at the head and pass- 
ing off at the tail. The motion of centipedes (Scolopendra), as well 
as that of this insect and its congeners, is retrogressive as well as progres- 
sive. Put your finger to the common one (Lithobius forficatus), and it 
will immediately retrograde, and with the same facility as if it was going 
forwards. ‘This difference, however, is then observable—it uses its four 
hind legs, which, when it moves in the usual way, are dragged after it. 
Almost all the other apterous insects, as well as many of those in the other 
orders, can move in all directions ; backwards, and towards both sides, as 
well as forwards. Bonnet mentions a spider (not a spinner) that always 
walked backwards when it attacked a large insect of its own tribe; but 
when it had succeeded in driving it from a captive fly, which, however, it 
did not eat, it walked forwards in the ordinary way.® 

Insects vary much in their walking paces: some crawling along, others 
walking slowly, and others moving with a very quick step. The field 
cricket (Gryllus campestris) creeps very slowly—the bloody-nose beetle 
(Timarcha tenebricosa) and the oil-beetle (Meloe Proscarabeus) march 
very leisurely ; the spider-wasps (Pompilus) walk by starts, as it were, 
vibrating their wings at the same time without expanding them ; while flies, 
ichneumons, wasps, &c., and many beetles, walk as fast as they can. 
One insect, a kind of snake-fly (Mantispa pagana), is said to walk upon 
its knees. The crane-flies (Tipula oleracea) and shepherd-spiders (Pha- 
langium) have legs so disproportionately long, that they seem to walk upon 
stilts; but when we consider that they have to walk over and amongst 
grass—the former laying its eggs in meadows—we shall see the reason of 
this conformation. Insects do not always walk in a right line; for I have 


1 Hist. Ins. 10. ? Redi, Opusc. i. 80. Amoreux, 44, 3 Guor. ii, 426. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 485 


eften observed the little midges (Psychoda Latr.), when. walking up glass, 
moving alternately from right to left and from left to right, as humble-bees 
fly, so as to describe small zigzags. . 

Numerous are the insects that rux. Almost all the predaceous tribes, 
the black dors, clocks, or ground-beetles (Eutrechina), and their fellow 
destroyers the Cicindele, and other Eupterina—which Linné, with much 
propriety, has denominated the tigers of the insect world—are gifted with 
uncommon powers of motion, and run with great rapidity. The velocity, 
in this respect, of ants is also very great. Mr. Delisle observed a fly— 
so minute as to be almost invisible—which ran nearly three inches in a 
demi-second, and in that space made 540 steps. Consequently it could 
take a thousand steps during one pulsation of the blood of a man in 
health. Which is as if a man, whose steps measured two feet, should 
run at the incredible rate of more than twenty miles ina minute! How 
astonishing, then, are the powers with which these little beings are gifted ! 
The forest-fly (Hippobosea), and its kindred genus Ornithyomia parasitic 
upon birds, are extremely difficult to take, as. 1 have more than once expe- 
rienced, from their extreme agility. Ilost one from this circumstance two 
years ago that I found upon the sea-lark (Charadrius Hiaticula), and 
which appeared to be nondescript. Another most singular insect, which, 
though apterous, is nearly related to these—I mean the louse of the bat 
(Nycteribia Vespertilionis), is still more remarkable for its swiftness. Its 
legs, as appears from the observations of Colonel Montague, are fixed in 
an unusual position on the upper side of the trunk. “ It transports itself,” 
to use the words of the gentleman just mentioned, ‘with such celerity 
from one part of the animal it inhabits to the opposite and most distant, 
although obstructed by the extreme thickness of the fur, that it is not 
readily taken.” «‘ When two or three were put into a small phial, their 
agility appeared inconceivably great; for as their feet are incapable of 
fixing upon so smooth a body, their whole exertion was employed in 
laying hold of each other; and in this most curious struggle they appeared 
actually flying in circles: and when the bottle was reclined, they would 
frequently pass from one end to the other with astonishing velocity, 
accompanied by the same gyrations: if by accident they escaped each 
other, they very soon became motionless; and as quickly were the whole 
put in motion again by the least touch of the bottle or the movement of 
an individual.? Incredibly great also is the rapidity with which a little 
reddish mite, with two black dots on the anterior part of its back (Gamasus 
Baccarwn), common upon strawberries, moves along. Such is the velocity 
with which it runs, that it appears rather to glide or fly than to use its 
legs. 
When insects walk or run, their legs are not the only members that are 
put in motion. They will not, or rather cannot, stir a step till their an- 
tenne are removed from their station of repose and set in action, When 
the chafers or petalocerous beetles are about to move, these organs, before 
concealed, instantly appear, and the Jamine which terminate them being 
separated from each other as widely as possible, they begin their march. 
They employ their antennz, however, not as feelers to explore surrounding 
objects,—their palpi being rather used for that purpose,—but, it should 


1 Lesser, 1. i. 248, note 24, 2 Linn. Trans. xi, 13. 
A\* 


486 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


seem, merely to receive vibrations, or impressions from the atmosphere, to 
which these lamine, especially in the male cock-@hafers, or rather tree- — 
chafers (Méelolonthe), present a considerable surface. Yet msects that 
have filiform or setaceous antenne appear often to use them for explor- 
ing. When the turnip-flea (Haltica oleracae) walks, its antenne are 
alternately elevated and depressed. The same thing takes place with 
some wood-lice (Oniscide), which use them as tactors, touching the sur- 
face on each side with them, as they go along. ‘This is not however con- 
stantly the use of this kind of antenne; for I have observed that 
Telephorus lividus—a narrow beetle with soft elytra, common in flowers, 
—when it walks vibrates its setaceous antenne very briskly, but does not 
explore the surface with them. The parasitic tribes of Hymenoptera, 
especially the minute ones, when they move, vibrate these organs most 
intensely, and probably by them discover the insect to which the law of 
their nature ordains that they should commit their eggs ; some even using 
them to explore the deep holes in which a grub, the appropriate food of 
their larva, lurks.1_ But upon this subject I shall have occasion to enlarge 
when I treat of the senses of insects. Antenne are sometimes used as 
legs. A gnat-like kind of bug (Ploiaria vagabunda) has very short ante- 
rior legs, or rather arms; while the two posterior pair are very long. Its 
antenna also are long. When it walks, which it does very slowly, with 
a solemn measured step, its fore-legs, which perhaps are useful only in 
climbing, or to seize its prey, are applied to the body, and the antenne 
being bent, their extremity, which is rather thick, is made to rest upon the 
surface on which the animal moves, and so supply ‘the place of fore-legs.? 
Mr. Curtis suspects that Xyela pusilla, a hymenopterous insect related to 
Xiphydria, uses its maxillary palpi as legs.? I have observed that mites 
often use the long hairs with which the tail of some species is furnished, to 
assist them in walking. 

Another mode of motion with which many insects are endowed is jump- 
ing. ‘This is generally the result of the sudden unbending of the articu- 
lations of the posterior legs and other organs, which before had received 
more than their natural bend. This unbending impresses a violent rota- 
tory motion upon these parts, the impulse of which being communicated 
to the centre of gravity, causes the animal to spring into the air with a 
determinate velocity, opposed to its weight more or less directly.4 Various 
are the organs by which these creatures are enabled to effect this motion. 
The majority do it by a peculiar conformation of the hind legs ; others, 
by a pectoral process; and others, again, by means of certain elastic 
appendages to the abdomen. 

The hind legs of many beetles are furnished with remarkably large and 
thick thighs. Of this description are several species of weevils; for 
instance, Orchestes and Ramphus ; the whole tribe of skippers (Haltica), 
and the splendid Asiatic tribe of Sagra®, &c. The object of these dis- 
proportioned and clumsy thighs is to allow space for more powerful mus- 
cles, by which the tibia, when the legs are unbent, are impelled with 
greater force. In the Orthoptera order all the grasshoppers, including 


* Marsham in Linn, Trans, iii. 26, 
? De Geer, iii. 324. 3 Brit. Ent. i. t. xxx. f. 4. 
* Cuvier, Anat. Comp. i, 396. > Oliv. Entom. n. 90. t. i. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 487 


the genera Gryllotalpa, Gryllus, Tridactylus, Locusta, Acrida, Ptero- 
phylla, Pneumora, Truxalis, Acrydium, Tetrix, &c., are distinguished by 
incrassated posterior thighs; which, however, are much longer, more 
tapering and shapely (they are indeed somewhat clumsy in the two first 
genera, the crickets), than those of most of the Coleoptera that are fur- 
nished with them. When disposed to leap, these insects bend their hind 
leg so as to bring the shank into close contact with the thigh, which has 
often a longitudinal furrow armed with a row of spines on each side to 
receive it. The leg being thus bent, they suddenly unbend it with a jerk, 
when pushing against the plane of position, they spring into the air often 
to a considerable height and distance. A locust, which, however, is 
aided by its wings, it is said will leap two hundred times its own length.’ 
—Aristophanes, in order to make the great and good Athenian pbiloso- 
pher, Socrates, appear ridiculous, represents him as having measured the 
leap of a flea.? In our better times scientific men have done this without 
being laughed at for it, and have ascertained that, comparatively, it 
equalled that of the locust, being also two hundred times its length. 
Being effected by muscular force, without the aid of wings, this is an 
astonishing leap. ‘There are several insects, however, which, although 
they are furnished with incrassated posterior thighs, do not jump. Of 
‘this description are some beetles belonging to the genus Necydalis ( (L-de- 
mera Oliv.), in which this seems a peculiarity of the male: and amongst 
the Hymenoptera, not to mention others, several species of Chalcis, and 
all that are known of that singular genus Leucospis. 

Many insects, that jump by means of their posterior legs, have not 
these thighs. ‘This is said to be the case with Scaphidium, a little tribe 
of beetles? : and one of the same order, that seems to come between Ano- 
bium and Pitilinus, found by our friend the Rev. R. Sheppard, and which 
I have named after him Choragus Sheppardz, is similarly circumstanced. 
In the various tribes of frog-hoppers (Cercopide, &c.) the posterior tibie 
appear to be principally concerned in their leaping. These are often very 
long, and furnished, on their exterior margin, with a fringe of stiff hairs, 
or a series of strong spines, by pressing which against the plane of posi- 
tion they are supposed to be aided in effecting this motion. On this occa- 
sion they bend their legs like the grasshoppers, and then unbending kick 
them out with violence. Many of them, amongst the rest Anthrophora 
spumaria, have the extremity of the above tibia armed with a coronet of 
spines; these are of great use in pushing them off when the legs are | 
unbended. ‘This insect, when about to leap, places its posterior thighs in 
a direction perpendicular to the plane of position, keeping them close to 
the body ; it next with great violence pushes them out backwards, so as 
to stretch the leg in a right line. These spines then lay hold of the sur- 
face, and by their pressure enable the body to spring forwards, when, 
being assisted by its wings, it will make astonishing leaps, sometimes as 
much as five or six feet, which is more than 250 times its own length; or 
as if a man of ordinary stature should be able at once to vault through 
the air to the distance of a quarter of a mile. Upon glass, where the 
spines are of no use, the insect cannot leap more than six inches.° The 


1 Swamm. Bibl. Nat. Ed. Hill, i. 123. b. 2 Aristoph. Nubes, Act. i. Sc. 2. 
3 Trost, Beitrage, 40. 4 De Geer, iii. 161. 5 De Geer, iii. 178. 


488 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


species. of another genus of the homopterous Hemiptera ( Chermes), that 
jump very nimbly by pushing ." their shanks, are Perbaps assisted in this 
motion by a remarkable horn looking towards the anus, which arms their 
posterior hip. Some bugs that leap well, Acanthia saltatoria, &c., seem 
to have no particular apparatus to assist them, except that their posterior 
tibie are very long. Several of the minute ichneumons also jump with 
great agility, but by what means [ am unable to say. There is a tribe of 
spiders, not spinners, that leap even sideways upon their prey. One of 
‘these (Salticus scenicus), when about to do this, elevates itself upon its 
legs, and lifting its head seems to survey the spot before it jumps. When 
these insects spy a small gnat or fly upon a wall, they creep very gently 
towards it with short steps, till they come within a convenient distance, 
when they spring upon it suddenly like a tiger. Bartram observed one of 
these spiders that jumped two feet upon a humble-bee. ‘The most amusing 
account, however, of the motions of these animals is giyen by the cele- 
brated Evelyn in his Travels. When at Rome, he often observed a spi- 
der of this kind hunting the flies which alighted upon a rail on which was 
its station. It kept crawling under the rail till it arrived at the part oppo- 
site to the fly, when stealing up it would attempt to leap upon it, If it 
discovered that it was not perfectly opposite, it would immediately slide 
down again unobserved, and at the next attempt would come directly 
upon the fly’s back. Did the fly happen not to be within a leap, it would 
move towards it so softly, that its motion seemed not more perceptible than 
that of the shadow of the gnomon of a dial. If the intended prey moved, 
the spider would keep pace with it as exactly as if they were actuated by 
one spirit, moving backwards, forwards, or on each side without turning. 
When the fly took wing, and pitched itself beand the huntress, she turned 
round with the swiftness of thought, and always kept her head towards it, 
though to all appearance as immovable as one. of the nails driven into the 
wood on which was her station: till at last, being arrived within due dis- 
tance, swift as lightning she made the fatal leap and secured her prey.} 
I have had an opportunity of observing very similar proceedings in Salticus 
scenicus. ‘ | . 
But the legs of insects are not the only organs by which they leap. 
The numerous species of the elastic beetles (Elater), skip-jacks as some 
call them, perform this motion by means of a pectoral process or mucro. 
These animals having very short legs, when laid upon their backs, cannot 
by their means recover a prone position. ‘To supply this seeming defect 
in their structure, Providence has furnished them with an instrument which, 
when they are so circumstanced, enables them to spring into the air and 
recover their standing. If you examine the breast ( pectus) of one of 
these insects, you will observe between the base of the anterior pair of 
legs a short and rather blunt process, the point of which is towards the 
anus. Opposite to this point, and a little before the base of the interme- 
diate legs, you will discover in the after-breast (postpectus) a rather deep 
eavity, in which the point is often sheathed. 'This simple apparatus is all 
that the insect wants to effect the above purpose. When laid upon its 
back, in your hand if you please, it will first bend back, so as to form a 
very obtuse angle with each other, the head and trunk, and abdomen and 


. 


1 Evelyn, quoted in Hooke’s Microgr. 200. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 489 


metathorax, by which motion the mucro is quite liberated from its sheath ; 
and then bending them in a contrary direction, the mucro enters it again, 
and the former attitude being briskly and suddenly resumed, the mucro 
flies out with a spring, and the insect rising, sometimes an inch or two in 
the air, regains its legs and moves off. The upper part of the body, by 
its pressure against the plane of position, assists this motion, during which 
the legs are kept close to its underside. Cuvier, when he says that man 
and birds are the only animals that can leap vertically', seems to have 
forgotten the leap of Elaters, which is generally vertical, the trunk being 
vertically above the organ that produces the leap. , 

Other insects again leap by means of the abdomen or some organs 
attached toit. An apterous species, belonging to the Ichneumonide, and 
to the genus Cryptus, takes long leaps by first bending its abdomen in- 
wards, as De Geer thinks, and then pushing it with force along the plane 
of position.2 There is a tribe of minute insects amongst the Aptera, 
found often under bark, sometimes on the water, and in various other 
situations, which Linné has named Podura, a term implying that they 
have a leg in their tail. This is literally the fact. For the tail, or anal 
extremity, of these insects is furnished with an inflexed fork, which, 
though usually bent under the body, they have the power of unbending ; 
during which action, the forked spring, pushing powerfully against the 
plane of position, enables the animal to leap sometimes two or three 
inches. What is more remarkable, these little animals are by this organ 
even empowered to leap upon water. There is a minute black species 
(P. aquatica), which in the spring is often seen floating on that contained 
in ruts, hollows, or even ditches, and in such infinite numbers as to 
resemble gunpowder strewed upon the surface. When disturbed, these 
black grains are seen to skip about as if ignited, jumping with as much 
ease as if the fluid were a solid plane, that resists their pressure. ‘The 
insects of another genus, separated from Podura by Latreille under the 
name of Sminthurus, have also an anal spring, which, when bent under 
the body, nearly reaches the head. These, which are of a more globose 
form than Podura, are so excessively agile that it is almost impossible to 
take them. Pressing their spring against the surface on which they stand, 
and unbending it with force, they are out of your reach before your finger 
can come near them. One of them, \S. fuscus, besides the caudal fork, 
has a very singular organ, the use of which is to prevent it from falling 
from a perpendicular surface, on which they are often found at a great 
height from the ground. Between the ends of the fork there is an elevated 
cylinder or tube, from which the animal, when necessary, can protrude 
two long, filiform, flexible transparent threads covered with a slimy secre- 
tion. By these, when it has lost its hold, it adheres to the surface on 
which it is stationed.2 Another insect related to the common sugar-louse, 
and called by Latreille Machilis polypoda, in some places common under 
stones’, has eight pair of springs, one on each ventral segment of the 
abdomen, by means of which it leaps to a wonderful distance, and with 
the greatest agility. ; 

1 Anat. Comp. i. 498. wk O10, 


3 De Geer, vii. 38. t. iii. f. 10. rr. 
# This insect abounds at East Farleigh, near Maidstone. 


> 
490 © MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


Climbing is another motion of insects that merits particular considera- 
tion : since, as this includes their power of moving against gravity—as 
we see flies and spiders do upon our ceilings, and up perpendicular sur- 
faces even when of glass, it affords room for much interesting and curious 
inquiry. Climbing insects may be divided into four classes. Those that 
climb by means of their claws; those that climb by a soft cushion of 
dense hairs, that, more or less, lines the underside of the joints of their 
tarsi, the claw-joint excepted ; those that climb by the aid of suckers, 
which adhere (a vacuum being produced between them and the plane of 
position) by the pressure of the atmosphere ; and those that are enabled 
to climb by means of some substance which they have the power of 
secreting. 

The first order of climbers—those that climb by means of their claws— 
includes a large proportion of insects, especially in the Coleoptera order— 
the majority of those that have five joints in their tarsi being of this 
description. The predaceous tribes, particularly the numerous and prowl- 
ing ground-beetles (Eutrechina,), often thus ascend the plants and trees 
after their prey. Thus one of them, the beautiful but ferocious Calosoma 
sycophanta, mounts the trunks and branches of the oak to commit fearful 
ravages amongst the hordes of caterpillars that inhabit it! By these the 
less savage but equally destructive tree-chafers (Melolonthe), and those 
enemies of vegetable beauty the rose-chafers (Cetonta aurata), are enabled 
to maintain their station on the trees and shrubs that they lay waste. 
And by these also the water-beetles (Dytiscus, Hydrophilus, &c.) climb 
the aquatic plants. But it is unnecessary further to enlarge upon this 
head ; I shall only observe, that in most of the insects here enumerated 
the claws appear to be aided by stiff hairs or bristles. 

Other climbers ascend by means of foot-cushions (pulvilli) composed 
of hairs, as thickly set as in plush or velvet, with which the under sides 
of the joints of their tarsi—the claw-joint, which is always naked, except- 
ed—are covered. These cushions are particularly conspicuous in. the 
beautiful tribe of plant-beetles (Chrysomelide). A common insect of this 
kind before mentioned, called the bloody-nose beetle (Timarcha tenebri- 
cosa), by the aid of these is enabled to adhere to the trailing plants, the 
various species of bedstraw (Galium), on which it feeds; and by these 
will support itself against gravity ; for both this and Chrysomela Goetting- 
ensis will walk upon the hand with their back downwards, and it then 
requires a rather strong pull to disengage them from their station. The 
whole tribe of weevils (Rhynchophora Latr.) are also furnished with these 
cushions, but not always upon all their joints, some having them only at 
their apex; and the palm-weevil (Cordylia Palmarum) at the extremity 
solely of the last joint but one. Those brilliant beetles the Buprestes 
have also these cushions, as have likewise the numerous tribes of capri- 
corn-beetles (Longicornes Latr.). The larve of these being timber-borers, 
the parent insect is probably thus enabled to adhere to this substance 
whilst it deposits its eggs. Indeed in some species of the former genus 
the cushions wear the appearance of suckers. While the linear species of 
Helops are without them, they clothe all the tarsi of H. eneus (Chalcites 


? Reaum., ii. 497, 


a 


a oo ee 


_ 


7 
b 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 491i 


K. Ms.).1 In two other genera of the same order, Silpha and Cicindela, 
the anterior tarsi of the males are furnished with them; in these, there- 
fore, they may be regarded, like the suckers of the larger water-beetles 
(Dytisci), as given for sexual purposes.” The three first joints of the 
anterior tarsi of many of the larger rove-beetles (Staphylinus L.) are 
dilated so as to form, as in the last-mentioned insects, an orbicular patella, 
but covered by cushions. Since in them this is not peculiar to the males, 
it is probably given that they may be able to support their long bodies 
when climbing. 

‘But the most remarkable class of climbers consists of those that are 
furnished with an apparatus by which they can form a vacuum, so as to 
adhere to the plane on which they are moving by atmospheric pressure. 
That flies can walk upon glass placed vertically, and in general against 
gravity, has long been a source of wonder and inquiry ; and various have 
been the opinions of scientific men upon the subject. Some imagined that 
the suckers on the feet of these animals were sponges filled with a kind of 
gluten, by which they were enabled to adhere to such surfaces. This 
idea, though incorrect, was not so absurd as at first it may seem; since 
we have seen above in many instances, and very lately in that of the 
Sminthurus fuscus, that insects are often aided in their motions by a secre- 
tion of this kind. Hooke appears to have been one of the first who 
remarked that the suspension of these animals was produced by some 
mechanical contrivance in their feet. Observing that the claws alone could 
not effect this purpose, he justly concluded that it must be principally 
owing to the mechanism of the two palms, pattens, or soles, as he calls 
the suckers ; these he describes as beset underneath with small bristles or 
tenters, like the wire teeth of a card for working wool, which having a 
contrary direction to the claws, and both pulling different ways, if there 
be any irregularity or yielding in the surface of a body, enable the fly to 
suspend itself very firmly. That they walk upon glass he ascribes to 
some ruggedness in the surface; and principally to a smoky tarnish which 
adheres to it, by means of which the fly gets footing upon it.2 But these 
tenter-hooks in the suckers of flies, and this smoky tarnish upon glass, are 
mere fancies, since they can walk as well upon the cleanest glass as upon 
the most tarnished. Reaumur also attributes this faculty of these animals 
to the hairs upon their suckers. That Jearned and pious naturalist, Dr. 
Derham, seems to have been one of the first who gave the true solution of 
this enigma. “ Flies,” says he, ‘“ besides their sharped hooked nails, have 
also skinny palms to their feet, to enable them to stick on glass and other 
smooth bodies, by the pressure of the atmosphere.”? He compares these 
palms to the curious suckers of male Dytisci, before alluded to, and 
illustrates their action by a common practice of boys, who carry stones by 
a wet piece of Jeather applied to their top. Another eminent and excel- 
lent naturalist, the late Mr. White, adopted this solution. He observes 
that in the decline of the year, when the mornings and evenings become 
chilly, many species of flies retire into houses and swarm in the windows ; 


' The insect here alluded to is figured by Olivier under the name of Tenebrio nitens (No. 
57. t. i. f. 4.): his Helops eneus (No. 58, t. i. f. 7.) is a different insect. 

* See Kirby, in Fauna Boreali- Americana, on various modifications of these foot cushions 
amongst some tribes of beetles. 

3 Microgr. 170. 4 ivi 259. 5 5 Physico- Theol, ed. 13. 363. note 0. 


492 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


that at first they are very brisk and alert ; but, as they grow more torpid, 
that they move with difficulty, and are scarcely able to lift their legs, 
which seem as if glued to the glass ; and that by degrees many do actually 
stick till they die in the place. Then, noticing Dr. Derham’s opinion as 
just stated, he further remarks, that they easily overcome the atmospheric 
pressure when they are brisk and alert. But, he proceeds, in the decline 
of the year this resistance becomes too mighty for their diminished strength ; 
and we see flies laboring along, and lugging their feet in windows as if 
they stuck fast to the glass.! 

Sir Joseph Banks, to whom every branch of Natural History has been 
so much indebted, excited an inquiry, the results of which confirmed 
Derham’s system concerning this motion of animals against gravity. When 
abroad, he had noticed that a lizard, on account of the sound that it emits 
before rain named the Gecko? (Lacerta Gecko), could walk against 
gravity up the walls of houses; and comparing this with the parallel 
motions of flies, he was desirous of having the subject more scientifically 
illustrated than it had been. This inquiry was put into the hands of Sir 
Everard Home, who was assisted in it by the incomparable pencil of Mr. - 
Bauer; and it was proved most satisfactorily that it is by producing a 
vacuum between certain organs destined for that purpose and the plane 
of position, sufficient to cause atmospheric pressure upon their exterior 
surface, that the animals in question are enabled to walk up a polished 
perpendicular, like the glass in our windows, and the chunam walls in 
India, or with their backs downward on a ceiling, without being brought 
to the ground by the weight of their bodies. 

The instruments by which a fly effects this purpose are two suckers 
connected with the last joint of the tarsus by a narrow infundibular neck, 
which has power of motion in all directions, immediately under the root 
of each claw. ‘These suckers consist of a membrane capable of extension 
and contraction; they are concavo-convex, with serrated edges, the 
concave surface being downy, and the convex granulated. When in 
action they are separated from each other, and the membrane expanded 
so as to increase the surface: by applying this closely to the plane of 
position, the air is sufficiently expelled to produce the pressure necessary 
to keep the animal from falling. When the suckers are disengaged, they 
are brought together again so as to be confined within the space between 
the two claws. ‘This may be seen by looking at the movements of a fly 
in the inside of a glass tumbler with a common microscope.? Thus the 


1 Nat. Hist. ii. 274. 

2? Amen. Acad. i. 549, The Gecko, probably, is not the only lizard that walks against 
gravity. St. Pierre mentions one not longer than a finger, that, in the Isle of France, climbs 
along the walls, and even up the glass, afier the flies and other insects, for which it watches 
with great patience. These lizards are sometimes so tame that they will feed out of the 
hand. (Voyage, &c.73.) Major Moor and Captain Green observed similar lizards in India, 
that ran up the walls.and over the ceilings after the mosquitos. Hasselquist says that the 
Gecko is very frequent at Cairo, both in the houses and without them, and that it exhales a 
very deleterious poison from the lobuli between the toes. He saw two women and a girl at 
the point of death, merely from eating a cheese on which it had dropped its venom. One 
ran over the hand of a man, who endeavored to catch it; and immediately little pustules, 
resembling those occasioned by the stinging-nettle, rose all over the parts the creature had 
touched. (Voyage, 220) M. Savigny. however, who examined this animal in Egypt, 
assures me that this account of Hasselquist’s, as far as it relates to the venom of the Gecko, 
is not correct, ' 

3 Philos, Trans. 1816, 325. t. xviii. f. 1—7. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 493 


fly, you see, does no more than the leech has been long known to do, when 
moving in a glass vessel. Furnished with a sucker at each extremity, by 
means of these organs it marches up and down at its pleasure, or as the 
state of the atmosphere inclines it.’ 


“eo gy Sawa aa 8 

! Mr. Blackwall, in a paper “On the Pulvilli of Insects,” having found that flies could 
walk up the sides of an exhausted receiver, denies that their suckers have any such power 
of forming a vacuum as is above ascribed to them, and explained their ability to climb up 
vertical polished bodies, such as glass, by the mechanical action of the minute hairs which 
clothe the inferior surfaces of the suckers, nearly as Dr. Hooke has suggested; but further 
experiments having shown him that flies cannot walk up glass which is made moist by 
breathing on it, or is thinly coated with oil or flour, he was led to the conclusion that these 
hairs are in fact tubular, and excrete a viscid fluid, by means of which they adhere to dry 
polished surfaces; and on close inspection with an adequate magnifying power, he was 
always able to discover traces of this adhesive material on the track on glass both of flies 
and various insects with pulvilli, and of those spiders which have the same power of climb- 
ing polished surfaces, such as Salticus scenicus, &c. (Linn. Trans. xvi. 490. 768. ; compare 
also Entom. Mag. i. 557.) 

On repeating Mr. Blackwall’s experiments, I found, just as he states, that when a pane of 
glass of a window was slightly moistened by breathing on it, or dusted with flower, blue- 
bottle flies, the common house-flies, and the common bec-fly (Fristalis tenaz) all slipped 
down again the instant they attempted to walk up these portions of the glass; and I more- 
over remarked that each time after thus slipping down, they immediately began to rub first 
the two fore tarsi, and then the two hind tarsi, together, as flies are so often seen to do, and 
continued this operation for some moments before they attempted again to walk. This last 
fact struck me very forcibly, as appearing to give an importance to these habitual procedures 
of flies that has not hitherto, as far as 1 am aware, been attached to them. These move- 
ments I had always regarded as meant to remove any particle of dust from the legs, but 
simply as an affair of instinctive cleanliness, like that of the cat when she licks herself (see 
Letter XXIII. p. 482.), and not as serving any more important object ; and such entomologi- 
cal friends as I have had an opportunity of consulting tell me that their view of the matter 
was precisely the same; nor does Mr. Blackwall appear to have seen it in a different light, 
since, though so strongly bearing on his explanation of the way in which flies mount smooth 
vertical surfaces, he never at all refers toit. Yet, from the absolute necessity which the 
flies on which I experimented appeared to feel of cleaning their pulvilli immediately after 
being wetted or clogged with flour, however frequently this occurred, there certainly seems 
ground for supposing that their usual and frequent operation for effecting this by rubbing 
their tarsi together is by no means one of mere cleanliness or amusement, but a very im- 
portant point of their economy, essentially necessary for keeping their pulvilli in a fit state 
for climbing up smooth vertical surfaces by constantly removing from them all moisture, 
and still more all dust, which they are perpetually liable to collect. In this operation the 
two fore and two hind tarsi are respectively rubbed together for their whole length, whence 
it might be inferred that the intention is to remove impurities from the entire tarsi; but this, 
Iam persuaded, is. not usually the object, which is simply that of cleaning the under side of 
the pulvilli by rubbing them backward and forward along the whole surface of the hairs 
with which the tarsi are clothed, and which seem intended to serve as a brush for this par- 
ticular purpose. Sometimes, indeed, when the hairs of the tarsi are filled with dust through- 
out, the operation of rubbing them together is intended to cleanse these hairs; because 
without these brushes were themselves clean, they could not act upon the hairs of the under 
side of the pulvilli. Of this I witnessed an interesting instance in an Eristalis tenax, which 
by walking on a surface dusted with flour had the hairs of the whole length of the tarsi, as 
well as the pulvilli, thus clogged with it. After slipping down from the painted surface of 
the window-frame, which she in vain attempted to climb, she seemed sensible that before 
the pulvilli could be brushed it was requisite that the brushes themselves should be clean, 
and full two minutes were employed to make them so by stretching out her trunk, and pass- 
ing them repeatedly along its sides, apparently for the sake of moistening the flour and 
causing its grains to adhere ; for after this operation, on rubbing her tarsi together, which 
she next proceeded to do, I saw distinct little pellets of flour fall down. A process almost 
exactly similar I have always seen used by blue-bottle flies and common house-flies which 
had their tarsi clogged with flour by walking over it, or by having it dusted over them ; but 
these manceuvres are required for an especial purpose, and on ordinary occasions, as before 
observed, the object in rubbing the tarsi together is not to clean them, but the pulvilli, for 
which they serve as brushes. Besides rubbing the tarsi together, flies are often seen, while 
thus employed, to pass the two fore tarsi and tibie with sudden jerks over the back of the 
head and eyes, and the two hind tarsi and tibie over and under the wings, and especially 
over their outer margins, and occasionally also over the back of the abdomen. That one 
object of these operations is often to clean these parts from dust I have no doubt, as on 
powdering flies with flour they thus employ themselves, sometimes for ten minutes, in de- 


42 


494 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


Dipterous insects, which in general have these organs, and some three 
on each foot!, are not exclusively gifted with them® for various others in 
different orders have them, and some in greater numbers. As I lately 
observed, the foot-cushions of the Buprestes are something very like them, 
particularly those of B. fascicularis. A Brazilian beetle in my cabinet, 
belonging to the family of the Clerid@, but not arranging well under any 
of Latreille’s genera, which I have named Priocera variegata, has curious 
involuted suckers on its feet. The strepsipterous genera Stylops and 
Xenos are remarkable for the vesicles of membrane that cover the under 


taching every part of it from their eyes, wings, and abdomen; but I am also inclined to 
believe that, in general, when this passing of the legs over the back of the head and outer 
margin of the wings takes place in connection with the ordinary rubbing of the tarsi together, 
as it usually does, that the object is rather for the purpose of completing the entire cleansing 
of the tarsal brushes (for which the row of strong hairs visible under a lens on the exterior 
margin of the wings seems well adapted), so that they may act more perfectly on the pul- 
villi. Here, too, it should be noticed, in proof of the importance of all the pulvilli being 
kept clean, that as the tarsi of the two middle legs cannot be applied to each other, flies are 
constantly in the habit of rubbing one of these tarsi and its pulvillus sometimes between 
the two fore tarsi, and ut other times between the two hind ones. I ought also not to omit 
stating, that having taken out of a spider’s net one of the minute Chalcidide just caught, 
and pulled away the threads attached to it, it spent some time in passing its hinder tarsi over 
its wings and abdomen, and then in passing its fore tarsi through its palpi, apparently as in 
the case of flies, to clean its pulvilli from any remains of the spider’s net ; and that having 
surrounded a minute beetle ( Meligethes eneus), which chanced to be on the window, with a 
slight circle of moisture, it was unable to pass through it, and repeatedly drew its wetted 
fore tarsi through its mouth, and rubbed the hind tarsi together; and that precisely the same 
results took place in the case of an Ichneumon placed in similar circumstances, only it spent 
much more time in rubbing both its fore and hind tarsi together after being wetted, and in 

assing the former over its antennz and through its mouth ; and when powdered with flour, 
it spent, like the flies before mentioned, some minutes in cleaning itself by the same processes. 

Though the above observations, hastily made on the spur of the occasion since beginning 
this note, seem to prove that it is necessary the pulvilh of flies and of some other insects 
should be kept free from moisture and dust to enable them to ascend vertical polished sur- 
faces, they cannot be considered as wholly settling the question as to the precise way in 
which these pulvilli, and those of insects generally, act in effecting a similar mode of pro- 
gression; and my main reason for here giving these slight hints is the hope of directing the 
attention of entomological and microscopical observers to.a field evidently, as yet, so imper- 
fectly explored. 

After writing the above, intended as the conclusion of this long note, I witnessed to-day 
(July 11, 1842) a fact which I cannot forbear adding to it. Observing a house-fly on the 
window, whose motions seemed very strange, I approached it, and found that it was making 
violent contortions, as though every leg were affected with Si. Vitus’s dance, in order to 
pull its pulvilli from the surface of the glass, to which they adhered so strongly that though 
it could drag them a little way, or sometimes hy a violent effort get first one and then another 
detached, yet the moment they were placed on the glass again, they adhered as if their un- 
der side were smeared with bird-lime. Once it succeeded in draging off its two fore legs, 
when it immediately began to rub the pulvilli against the tarsal brushes ; 'but on replacing 
them on the glass they adhered as closely as before, and it was only by efforts almost con- 
vulsive, and which seemed to threaten to pull off its limbs from its body, that it could suc- 
ceed in moving a quarter of an inch atatime. After watching it with much interest for 
five minutes, it at last by its continued exertions got its feet released and flew away, and 
alighted on a curtain, on which it walked quite briskly, but soon again flew back to the 
window, where it had precisely the same difficulty in pulling its pulvilli from the glass as 
before ; but after observing it some time, and at last trying to catch it, that I might examine 
its feet with a lens, it seemed by a vigorous effort to regain its powers, and ran quite ac- 
tively on the glass, and then flying away I lost sight of it. Iam unable to give any satis- 
factory solution of this singular fact. The season, and the fly’s final activity, preclude the 
idea of its arising from cold or debility, to which Mr. White attributes the dragging of flies’ 
legs at the close of autumn. The pulvilli certainly had much more the appearance of ad- 
hering to the glass by a viscid material than by any pressure of the atmosphere, and it is so 
far in favor of Mr. Blackwall’s hypothesis, on which one might conjecture that from some 
cause (perhaps of disease) the hairs of the pulvilli had poured out a greater quantity of this 
vege material than usual, and more than the musctlar strength of the fly was able to cope 
with. 


1 Philos. Trans. 1816, 325, t. xviii. f. 8—11. 


\ MOTIONS OF INSECTS. : 495 


side of their tarsi, which, though flaccid in old specimens, appear to be 
inflated in the living animal or those that are recent.! It is not improbable 
that these vesicles, which are large and hairy, may act in some degree as 
suckers, and assist it in climbing. 

The insects of the Orthoptera order are, many of them, remarkable for 
two kinds of appendages connected with my present subject, being fur- 
nished both with suckers and cushions. ‘The former are concavo-convex 
processes, varying in shape in different species, being sometimes orbicular, 
sometimes ovate or oblong, and often wedge-shaped, which terminate the 
tarsus between the claw, one on each foot. They are of a hard substance, 
and seem capable of free motion. In some instances*, another minute 
cavity is discoverable at the base of the concave part, similar to that in 
Cimbex lutea? The latter, the foot-cushions, are usually convex appen- 
dages, of an oblong form, and often, though not always, divided in the 
middle by a very deep longitudinal furrow, attached to the under side of 
the tarsal joints. Sir E. Home is of opinion that the object of these foot- 
cushions is to take off the jar when the body of the animal is suddenly 
brought from a state of motion to a state of rest.4 This may very likely 
be one of their uses; but there are several circumstances which militate 
against its being the only one. By their elasticity they probably assist the 
insects that have them in their leaps; and when they climb they may in 
some degree act as suckers, and prevent them from falling. But their use 
will be best ascertained by a review of the principal genera of the order. 
Of these the cock-roaches (Blatta), the spectres (Phasma), and the pray- 
ing insects (Mantis), are distinguished by tarsi of five joints.? The grass- 
hoppers with setaceous antenne (Acrida) have four tarsal joints. ‘Those 
with filiform antenne (Locusta and Acrydium), those with ensiform (Trux- 
alis®), and the crickets (Gryllus), have only three. In Blatta, the varia- 
tions with respect to the suckers and cushions (for many species are fur- 
nished with both) are remarkable. The former in some (Blatta gigantea) 
are altogether wanting; in others (B. Petivertana) they are mere rudi- 
ments ; and in others (B. Madera) they are more conspicuous, and resem- 
ble those of the Gryllide. The foot-cushions also in some are nearly 
obsolete, and occupy the mere extremity of the four first tarsal joints (B. 
orientalis, Americana, Capensis, &c.). In B. Petiveriana there is none 
upon the first joint; but upon the extremity of the four last, not excepting 
the claw-joint, there is a minute orbicular concave one, resembling a sucker. 
In others (B. gigantea, &c.) they extend the length of the four first joints, 
and are very conspicuous. In some (B. Mouffeti K."), which have no 


1 Kirby in Linn. Trans. xi. 106. t. viii. f. 13. a. 

2 Lobserved this in the hind legs of a variety of Locusta migratoria. 

3 Philos. Trans. 1816, 325. t. xix. f. 5. 4 Ibid. p. 325. 

5 In a specimen in my cabinet of Blatta gigantea, the posterior and anterior tarsi of one 
side have only four joints, while the intermediate one has five. On the other side the hind 
leg is broken off, but the anterior and intermediate tarsi have both five joints. In another 
specimen one posterior tarsus has four and the other five joints. 

1 a name of this genus, properly spelled, is Yrozallis, from the Greek TpwéadXs, 
ryllus. 

7 This insect, which is remarkable for having the margin of its thorax reflexed, was long 
since well figured in Monffet’s work (130. fig. infima). It has not, however, been described 
by any other author I have met with. It iscommon in Brazil. Some specimens are pallid, 
while others are of a dark brown. It is to be observed that the Blattina are resolvable into 
several genera. 


496 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


claw-sucker, there appears to be a cavity in the extremity of the claw- 
joint, which may serve the purpose of one. 'TWese foot-cushions are 
usually of a pale color; but in one specimen of a hairy female which I 
have, from Brazil, they are black. The spectre genus (Phasma) exhibits 
no particular varieties in this respect. ‘The tarsal joints of the legs have 
cushions at their apex, which appear to be bifid. They have a large orbicular 
sucker between the claws. In Mantis the fore feet have neither of the 
parts in question, and the others have no suckers. They have cushions 
on the four first tarsal joints of the two last pair of legs, which, though 
smaller, are shaped much like those in Phasma. In Acrida the feet have 
no suckers between the claws; but they are distinguished by two oval, 
soft, concave, and moveable processes attached to the base of the first 
joint of the tarsus, which probably act as suckers.’ In this genus there 
are two foot-cushions on the first joint of the tarsi, and one on each of 
the two following ones.2 The species of the genus Locusta come 
next. This genus is called Acrydium by Latreille after Geoffroy ; but, 
since it includes the true locust, it ought to retain the name Locusta given 
by Linné to the tribe to which it belongs.? All these insects have the 
terminal sucker between the claws, three foot-cushions on the first joint of 
the tarsus, and one on the second‘; and the same conformation also distin- 
guishes the feet of Truxalis. In the species of Acrydium F. (Tetrix Latr.), 
the foot-cushions, I believe—for in the dead insect they are the reverse of 
conspicuous—are arranged nearly as in the two preceding genera, but 
these insects are without the claw-sucker. And lastly, Gryllus has neither 
suckers nor cushions. From this statement it seems to follow—since 
Blatta, Phasma, and Mantis, that do not leap, are provided with cushions, 
and Gryllus, a heavy tribe of insects that does, are without them—that 
their object cannot be exclusively to break the fall of the insects that 
have them. And for the same reason we may conclude that they must 
have some further use than augmenting their elasticity when they jump. 
When we consider that the Blatte, many of which have no suckers, or 
very small ones, are climbing insects (1 have seen B. Germanica run up 
and down the walls of an apartment with great agility), and that the long 
and gigantic apterous spectres, &c. (Phasma) require considerable means 
to enable them to climb the trees in which they feed, and to maintain 
their station upon them, we may conclude that these cushions, by acting 
in some degree as suckers, may promote these ends. 

Amongst the homopterous Hemiptera, Chermis and many of the Cer- 
copide® are furnished with the claw-suckers; but the noisy Cicada, as 
well as the heteropterous section, at least as faras my examination of them 
has gone, have them not. De Geer has observed, speaking of a srmall fly 
of this order (Thrips physapus), that the extremity of its feet is furnished 
with a transparent membranaceous flexible process, like a bladder. He 
further says that when the animal fixes and presses this vesicle on the sur- 
face on which it walks, its diameter is increased, and it sometimes appears 
concave, the concavity being in proportion to the pressure ; which made 


1 De Geer, iii. 421. t. xxi. f. 138.h. This author has also noticed the cushions in this 
genus and Locusta, and the claw-sucker in the latter, which he thinks are analogous to those 
of the fly. Ibid. 462. t. xxii. f. 7, 8. 

2 Philos. Trans. 1816, t. xxi. f. 8B—13. 3 See Zool. Jour. for 1825, No. iv. 431. 

4 Philos. Trans. 1816, t. xxi. f. 1—9. 5 De Geer, iii. 132. 173. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 497 


him suspect that it acted like a cupping-glass, and so produced the adhe- 
sion.! This circumstance affords another proof that the foot-cushions in 
the Orthoptera may act the same part; they appear to be vesicular; and 
in numbers of specimens, after death, I have observed that they become 
concave, particularly in Acrida viridissima. 

In Cimbex, and others amongst the saw-fly tribes, the claw-sucker is 
distinguished by this remarkable peculiarity, that its upper surface is con- 
cave”, so that before it is used it must be bent inwards. Besides these, at 
the extremity of each tarsal joint these animals are furnished with a spoon- 
shaped sucker, which seems analogous to the cushions in the Gryllina, 
Locustina, &c.; and, what is more remarkable, the two spurs (calcaria) 
at the apex of the shanks have likewise each‘a minute one.* Various 
other insects of this order have the claw-suckers. Amongst others the 
common wasp (Vespa vulgaris) is by these enabled to walk up and down 
our glass windows. 

We learn from De Geer that several mites (to finish with the Aptera) 
have something of this kind. Among these is the cheese-mite (Acarus 
siro); its four fore feet being terminated by a vesicle with a long neck, 
to which it can give every kind of inflexion. When it sets its foot down, 
it enlarges and inflates it; and when it lifts it up, it contracts it so that 
the vesicle almost entirely disappears. This vesicle is between two claws.* 

The itch Acarus (A. scabiet) is similarly circumstanced. Ixodes Rici- 
nus and Reduvius have also these vesicles—which are armed with two 
claws—on all their feet.° 

Tam next to consider those climbers that ascend and descend, and 
probably maintain themselves in their station, by the assistance of a secre- 
tion which they have the power of producing. You will immediately 
perceive that I am speaking of the numerous tribes of spiders (Aranecde), 
which, most of them, are endowed with this faculty. Every body knows 
that these insects ascend and descend by means of a thread that issues 
from them®; but perhaps every one has not remarked—when they wish to 
avoid a hand held out tocatch them, or any other obstacle—that they can 
sway this thread from the perpendicular. When they move up or down, 
their legs are extended, sometimes gathering in and sometimes guiding their 
thread; but when their motion is suspended, they are bent inwards. ‘These 
animals, although they have no suckers or other apparatus—except the 
hairs of their legs and the three claws of their biarticulate tarsi, to enable 
them to do it—can also walk against gravity, both in a perpendicular and 
a prone position. Dr. Hulse, in Ray’s Letters, seems to have furnished a 
clue that will very well explain this. I give it you in his own homely 
phrase. “They” (spiders) “will often fasten their threads in several 
places to the things they creep up; the manner is by beating their bums 
or tails against them as they creep along.”’? Fixing their anus by means 
of a web, the anterior part of their body, when they are resting, we can 
readily conceive, would be supported by the claws and hairs of their legs ; 
and their motion may be accomplished by alternately fixing one and then 


1 De Geer, iii. 7. 2 Philos. Trans. 1816, t. xix. f. 3, 4. 
3 Philos. Trans. 1816, t. xix. f. 1—9. 4 De Geer, vii. 91. t. v. f. 6, 7. 
§ Ibid. 96. t. v. f. 13, 14. 17. 19. t. vi. f. 2.5. 

6 The caterpillars of many Lepidopterous insects possess the same power. 7 65. 


42* 


498 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


the other. But you will remember I give you this merely as conjecture, 
having never verified it by observation." ' 

It may not be amiss to mention here another apterous insect that reposes 
on perpendicular or prone surfaces, without either suckers or any viscous 
secretion by which it can adhere to them. I mean the long-legged or 
shepherd spiders (Phalangium). ‘The tarsi of these insects are setaceous, 
and nearly as fine as a hair, consisting sometimes of more than forty joints, 
those toward the extremity being very minute, and scarcely discernible, 
and terminating in a single claw. These tarsi, which resemble antenne 
rathér than feet, are capable of every kind of inflexion, sometimes even 
of a spiral one. These circumstances enable them to apply their feet to 
the inequalities of the surface on which they repose, so that every joint 
may in some measure become a point of support. ‘Their eight legs also, 
which diverge from their body like the spokes from the nave of a wheel, 
give them equal hold of eight almost equidistant spaces, which, doubtless, 
is a great stay to them. 

The next species of locomotion exhibited by perfect insects is flying. 
Tam not certain whether under this head I ought to introduce the sailing 
of spiders in the air; but as there is no other under which it can be more 
properly arranged, I shall treat of it here. I shall therefore divide flying 
insects into those that fly without wings, and those that fly with them. 

I dare say you are anxious to be told how any animals can fly without 
wings, and wish me to begin with them. As an observer of nature, you 
have often, without doubt, been astonished by that sight occasionally 
noticed in fine days in the autumn, of webs—commonly called gossamer 
webs—covering the earth and floating in the air; and have frequently 
asked yourself{—What are these gossamer webs? Your question has from 
old times much excited the attention of learned naturalist. It was an old 
and strange notion that these webs were composed of dew burned by 
the sun. 


ee ae The fine nets which oft we woven see 


Of scorched dew,” . 


says Spenser. Another, fellow to it, and equally absurd, was that adopt- 
ed by a learned man and good natural philosopher, and one of the first 
fellows of the Royal Society, Robert Hooke, the author of Micrographia, 
“Much resembling a cobweb,” says he, “or a confused lock of these 
cylinders, is a certain white substance which, after a fog, may be observed 
to fly up and down the air: catching several of these, and examining 
them with my microscope, I found them to be much of the same form, 
looking most like to a flake of worsted prepared to be spun ; though by 
what means they should be generated or produced is not easily imagined ; 
they were of the same weight, or very little heavier than the air; and *tts 
not unlikely but that those great white clouds, that appear all the summer 
time, may be of the same substance.”* So liable are even the wisest men 


1 Mr. Blackwall, as before stated, conceives that the power possessed by spiders which 
use no threads, such as Drassus melanogaster, Salticus scenicus, &c., of walking up polished 
surfaces, is derived from an adhesive fluid emitted from the tubular hair-like appendages of 
their tarsi. (Linn. Trans. xvi. 480. 769.) 

2 Microgr 202. It has been objected to an excellent primitive writer (Clemens Romanus), 
that he believed the absurd fable of the phoenix. But surely this may be allowed for in 
him, who was no naturalist, when a scientific natural philosopher could believe that the 
clouds are made of spiders’ web! 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 499 


to error, when leaving fact and experiment, they follow the guidance of 
fancy. Some French naturalists have supposed that these jils de la 
Vierge, as they are called, are composed of the cottony matter in which 
the eggs of the Coccus of the vine (C. Vitis) are enveloped.’ In a 
country abounding in vineyards this supposition would not be absurd ; 
but in one like Britain, in which the vine is confined to the fruit-garden, 
and the Coccus seldom seen out of the conservatory, it will not at all 
account for the phenomenon. What will you say, if I tell you that 
these webs (at least many of them) are air-balloons, and that the aéro- 
nauts are not 
“Lovers who may bestride the gossamer 


That idles in the wanton summer air, 
And yet not fall,” 


but spiders, who, long before Montgolfier, nay, ever since the creation, 
have been in the habit of sailing through the fields of ether in these air- 
light chariots! ‘This seems to have been suspected long ago by Henry 
Moore, who says, . 
“ As light and thin as cobwebs that do fly 
In the blew air, caus’d by the autumnal sun, 
That boils the dew that on the earth doth lie, 


May seem this whitish rag then is the scum; 
Unless that wiser men make’t the field-spider’s loom :”? 


where he also alludes to the old opinion of scorched dew. But the 
first naturalists who made this discovery appear to have been Dr. Hulse 
and Dr. Martin Lister—the former first observing that spiders shoot their 
webs into the air; and the latter, besides this, that they were carried 
upon them in that element.? This last gentleman, in fine serene weather 
in September, had noticed these webs falling from the heavens, and in 
them discovered more than. once a spider, which he named the bird. 
On another occasion, whilst he was watching the proceedings of a com- 
mon spider, the animal, suddenly turning upon its back and elevating 
its anus, darted forth a long thread, and vaulting from the place on 
which it stood was carried upwards to a considerable height. Numerous 
observations afterwards confirmed this extraordinary fact ; and he further 
discovered that while they fly in this manner, they pull in their long 
thread with their fore feet, so as to form it into a ball—or, as we may 
call it, air-balloon—of flake. The height to which spiders will thus 
ascend he affirms is prodigious. One day in the autumn, when the air 
was full of webs, he mounted to the top of the highest steeple of York 
minster, from whence he could discern the floating webs still very high 
above him. Some spiders that fell and were entangled upon the pin- 
nacles he took. They were of a kind that never enter houses, and 
therefore could not be supposed to have taken their flight from the 
steeple.* It appears from his observations that this faculty is not con- 
fined to one species of spider, but is common to several, though only in 


1 Latreille, Hist. Nat. xii. 388. 2 Quoted in the Atheneum, v. 126. 

3 Ray’s Letters, 36. 69. 

4 Ray’s Letters, 37.87. Lister, De Aran. 80. Lister illustrates the force with which 
these creatures shoot their thread, by a homely though very forcible simile: ‘“ Resupinata 
(says he) anum in ventum dedit, filamque ejaculata est quo plane modo robustissimus 
juvenise distentissima vesica urinam.,” 


500 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


their young or half-grown state’; whence we may infer that when full- 
grown their bodies are too heavy to be thus conveyed. One spider he 
noticed that at one time contented itself with ejaculating a single thread, 
while at others it darted out several, like so many shining rays at the 
tail of acomet. Of these, in Cambridgeshire in October, he once saw 
an incredible number sailing in the air.2 Speaking of his Ar. subfus- 
cus minutissimis oculis, &c., he says, ‘Certainly this is an excellent 
rope-dancer, and is wonderfully delighted with darting its threads: nor 
is it only carried in the air, like the preceding ones ; but it effects itself 
its ascent and sailing: for, by means of its legs closely applied to each 
other, it as it were balances itself, and promotes and directs its course 
no otherwise than as if nature had furnished it with wings or oars.’ 
A later but equally gifted observer of nature, Mr. White, confirms Dr. 
Lister’s account. ‘“‘ Every day in fine weather in autumn,” says he, “ do 
I see these spiders shooting out their webs, and mounting aloft: they will 
go off from the finger, if you take them into your hand. Last summer 
one alighted on my book as I was reading in the parlor; and running to 
the top of the page and shooting out a web, took its departure from thence. 
But what I most wondered at was, that it went off with considerable 
velocity in a place where no air was stirring; and I am sure that I did not 
assist it with my breath. So that these little crawlers seem to have while 
mounting some locomotive power without the use of wings, and, move 
faster than the air in the air itself.”’4 A writer in the last number of 
Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy, under the signature of Carolan, has 
given some curious observations on the mode in which some geometric 
spiders shoot and direct their threads, and fly upon them; by which it 
appears that as they dart them out they guide them asif by magic, emitting 
at the same time a stream of air, as he supposes, or possibly some subtile 
electric fluid. One, which was running upon his hand, dropped by its 
thread about six inches from the point of his finger, when it immediately 
emitted a pretty long line at a right angle with that by which it was sus- 
pended. This thread, though at first horizontal, quickly rose upwards, 
carrying the spider along with it. When it had ascended as far above his 
finger as it had dropped before below it, it let out the thread by which it 
had been attached to it, and continued flying smoothly upwards till it 
nearly reached the roof of the room, when it veered on one side and 
alighted on the wall. In flying, its motion was smoother and quicker than 
when a spider runs along its thread. He observes, that as the line length- 
ens behind them, the tendency of spiders to rise increases. I have myself 
more than once observed these creatures take their flight, and find the fol- 
lowing memorandum with respect to their mode of proceeding :—* The 
spider first extends its thighs, shanks, and feet into a right line, and then 
elevating its abdomen till it becomes vertical, shoots its thread into the air, 
and flies off from its station.” It is not often, however, that an observer 
can be gratified with this interesting sight, since these animals are soon 
alarmed. Ihave frequently noticed them—for at the times when these 
webs are floating in the air they are very numerous—on the vertical angle 
of a post or pale, or one of the uprights of a gate, with the end of their 


1 De Araneis, 8. 27. 64. 75. 79. 2 Ibid. 79. 3 Tbid. 85. 
4 Nat. Hist. i. 327. 5 No. lii. 306. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 501 


abdomen pointing upwards, as if to shoot their thread previously to flying 
of; when, upon my approaching to take a nearer view, they have lowered 
it again, and persisted in disappointing my wish to see them mount aloft. 
The rapidity with which the spider vanishes from the sight upon this occa- 
sion, and darts into the air, is a problem of no easy solution. Can the 
length of web that they dart forth counterpoise the weight of their bodies ; 
or have they any organ analogous to the natatory vesicles of fishes’, which 
contributes at their will to render them buoyant in the air? Or do they 
rapidly ascend their threads in their usual way, and gather them up, till 
having collected them into a mass of sufficient magnitude, they give them- 
selves to the air, and are carried here and there in these chariots? I must 
here give you Mr. White’s very curious account of a shower of these webs 
that he witnessed. On the 2Ist of September, 1741, intent upon field 
diversions, he rose before daybreak; but on going out he found the whole 
face of the country covered with a thick coat of cobweb, drenched with 
dew, as if two or three setting-nets had been drawn one over the other. 
When his dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were so blinded and hood- 
winked that they were obliged to lie down and scrape themselves. This 
appearance was followed by a most lovely day. About nine a. m. a shower 
of these webs (formed not of single floating threads, but of perfect flakes, 
some near an inch broad, and five or six long) was observed falling from 
very elevated regions, which continued without interruption durmg the 
whole of the day ; and they fell with a velocity which showed that they 
were considerably heavier than the atmosphere. When the most elevated 
station in the country where this was observed was ascended, the webs 
were still to be seen descending from above, and twinkling like stars in the 
sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious. The flakes of the 
web on this occasion hung so thick upon the hedges and trees, that baskets 
full might have been collected. No one doubts, he observes, but that 
these webs are the production of small spiders, which swarm in the fields 
in fine weather in autumn, and have a power of shooting out webs from 
their tails, so as to render themselves buoyant and lighter than the air.* 
In Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn, 
that they are there metaphorically called “ Der fliegender Sommer” (the 
flying or departing summer) ; and authors speak of the web as often hang- 
ing in flakes like wool on every hedge and bush throughout extensive 
districts. 

Here we may inquire—Why is the ground in these serene days covered 
so thickly by these webs, and what becomes of them? What occasions 
the spiders to mount into the air, and do the same species form both the 
terrestrial and aérial gossamer? And what causes the webs at last to fall 
to the earth? I fear I cannot to all these queries return a fully satisfac- 
tory answer; but I will do the best I can. At first one would conclude, 
from analogy, that the object of the gossamer which early in the morning 
is spread over stubbles and fallows—and sometimes so thickly as to make 
them appear as if covered with a carpet, or rather overflown by a sea of 
gauze, presenting, when studded with dew-drops, as I have often witnessed, 
a most enchanting spectacle—is to entrap the flies and other insects as 
they rise into the air from their nocturnal station of repose to take their 


1 Cuvier, Anat. Comp. i. 504. 2 Nat. Hist. i. 325, 


502 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


diurnal flights. But Dr. Strack’s observations render this very doubtfal ; 
for he kept many of the spiders that produce these webs in a large glass 
upon turf, where they spun as when at liberty, and he could never observe 
them attempt to catch or eat—even when entangled in their webs—the flies 
and gnats with which he supplied them; though they greedily sucked water 
when sprinkled upon the turf, and remained lively for two months without 
other food. As the single threads shot by other spiders are usually their 
bridges, this perhaps may be the object of the webs in question ; and thus 
the animals may be conveyed from furrow to furrow or straw to straw less 
circuitously, and with less labor, than if they had traveled over the ground. 
As these creatures seem so thirsty, may. we not conjecture that the drops 
of dew, with which they are always as it were strung, are a secondary 
object with them? So prodigious are their numbers, that sometimes every 
stalk of straw in the stubbles, and every clod and stone in the fallows, 
swarms with them. Dr. Strack assures us that twenty or thirty often sit 
upon a single straw, and that he collected about 2000 in half an hour, 
and could have easily doubled the number had he wished it: he remarks, 
that the cause of their escaping the notice of other observers is their fall- 
ing to the ground upon the least alarm. , 
As to what becomes of this immense carpeting of web there are diffe- 
rent opinions. Mr. White conjectures that these threads, when first shot, 
might be entangled in the rising dew, and so drawn up, spiders and all, 
by a brisk evaporation, into the region where the clouds are formed.? 
But this seems almost as inadmissible as that of Hooke, before related. 
An ingenious and observant friend, thinking the numbers of the flying 
spiders not sufficient to produce the whole of the phenomenon in question. 
is of opinion that an equinoctial gale, sweeping along the fallows and 
stubbles coated with the gossamer, must bring many single threads into 
contact, which, adhering together, may gradually collect into flakes ; and 
that being at length detached by the violence of the wind, they are carried 
along with it: and as it is known that such winds often convey even sand 
and earth to great heights, he deems it highly probable that so light a sub- 
stance may be transported to so great an elevation as not to fall to the 
earth for some days after, when the weather has become serene, or to 
descend upon ships at sea, as has sometimes happened. This, which is 
in part adopted from the German authors, is certainly a much more reason- 
able supposition than the other; but some facts seem to militate against 
it: for, in the first place, though gossamer often occurs upon the ground 
when there is none in the air, yet the reverse of this has never been 
observed ; for gossamer in the air, as in the instance recorded by Mr. 
White, is always preceded by gossamer on the ground. Now, since the 
weather is constantly calm and serene when these showers appear, it can- 
not be the wind that carries the web from the ground into the air. Again, 
it is stated that these showers take place after several calm days*; but, if 
the web was raised by the wind into the air, it would begin to fall as soon 
as the wind ceased. Whence I am inclined to think that the cause 
assigned by Dr. Lister is the real source of the whole phenomenon. 
Though ordinary observers have overlooked them, he noticed these spiders 


1 Neue Schriften der Naturforschenden Gessellschaft zu Halle, 1810, v. Heft. 
2 Nat. Hist. i. 326, 3 Ray’s Letters, 36. 


/ 
MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 503 


in the air in such prodigious numbers, that he deemed them sufficient to 
produce the effect. I shall not, however, decide positively ; but, having 
stated the different opinions, leave you to your own judgment. 

The next query is, What occasions the spiders to mount their chariots 
and seek the clouds? Is it in pursuit of their food? - Insects, in the fine 
warm days in which this phenomenon occurs, probably take higher flights, 
than usual, and seek the upper regions of the atmosphere ; and that the 
spiders catch them there, appears by the exuvie of gnats and flies, which 
are often found in the falling webs.!_ Yet one would suppose that insects 
would fly high at all times in the summer in serene warm weather, Per- 
haps the flight of some particular species constituting a favorite food of 
our little charioteers—the gnats, for instance, which we have seen some- 
times rise in clouds into the air—may at these times take place; or the 
species of spiders that are most given to these excursions may not abound 
in their young state—when only they can fly—at other seasons of the 
year. 

Whether the same species that cover the earth with their webs produce 
those that fill the air, is to be our next inquiry. Did the appearance of 
the one always succeed that of the other, this might be reasonably con- 
cluded; but the former, as I lately observed to you, often occurs without 
being followed by the latter. Yet, since it should seem that the aérial 
gossamer, though it does not always follow it, is always preceded by the 
terrestrial, this warrants a conjecture that they may be synonymous. ‘T'wo 
German authors, Bechstein? and Strack®, have described the spider that 
produces gossamer in Germany under the name of <Aranea obtextrix. 
But it is not clear, unless they have described it at different ages, when 
spiders often greatly change their appearance, that they mean the same 
species. ‘The former describes his as of the size of a small pin’s head, 
with its eight eyes disposed in a circle, having a black brown body and 
lizht yellow legs: while Dr. Strack represents his A. obtextrix as more 
than two lines in length; eyes four in a square, and two on each side 
touching each other; thorax deep brown, with paler streaks; abdomen 
below dull white, above dark copper brown, with a dentated white spot 
running longitudinally down the middle. The first of these, if distinct, 
as I suspect they are, agrees very well with the young of one which Lis- 
ter observed as remarkable for taking aérial flights’, and which I have 
most usually seen so engaged. ‘The other may possibly be that before 
noticed, which he found in such infinite numbers in Cambridgeshire.® If 
this conjecture be correct, it will prove that the same species first produce 
the gossamer that covers the ground, and then, shooting other threads, 
mount upon them into the air. 

My last query was, What causes these webs ultimately to fall to the 
earth? Mr. White’s observation will, I think, furnish the best answer. 
“If the spiders have the power of coiling up their. webs in the air, as Dr. 
Lister affirms, then when they become heavier than the air they will fall.’ 
The more expanded the web the lighter and more buoyant, and the more 
condensed the heavier it must be. 


'Tbid. 42. Lister, De Araneis, 8. 
2 Lichtenberg und Voight Magazin, 1789, vi. 53. 

3 Neue Schriften der Naturforsch. &c. 1810, v. Heft. 41—56. 
4 De Araneis, 66. 5 Ibid. 79. 8 Nat. Hist. i. 326, 


504 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


I trust you will allow, from this mass of evidence, that the English 
Arachnologists—may I coin this term ?—were cofrect in their account of 
this singular phenomenon ; and think, with me, that Swammerdam (who, 
however, admits that spiders sail on their webs), and after him De Geer, 
were rather hasty when they stigmatized the discovery that these 
animals shoot their webs into the air, and so take flight, as a strange and 
unfounded opinion.’ The fact, though so well authenticated, is indeed 
strange and wonderful, and affords another proof of the extraordinary 
powers, unparalleled in the higher orders of animals, with which the Crea- 
tor has gifted the insect world. Were, indeed, man and the larger 
animals, with their present propensities, similarly endowed, the whole 
creation would soon go to ruin. But these almost miraculous powers in 
the hands of these little beings only tend to keep it in order and beauty. 
Adorable is that Wisdom, Power, and Goodness, that has distinguished 
these next to nothings by such peculiar endowments for our preservation 
as if given to the strong and mighty would work our destruction. 

After the foregoing marvelous detail of the aérial excursions of our 
insect air-balloonists, | fear you will think the motions of those which fly 
by means of wings less interesting. You will find, however, that they 
are not altogether barren of amusement. ‘Though the wings are the prin- 
cipal instruments of the flight of insects, yet there are others subsidiary to 
them, which I shall here enumerate, considermg them more at large under 
the orders to which they severally belong. ‘These are wing-cases (elytra, 
tegmina, and hemelytra); winglets (alule) ; poisers (halteres) ; tailets 
(caudule) ; hooklets (hamuli); base-covers (tegule), &c. Besides, 
their ¢atls, legs, and even antenna, assist them in some instances in this 
motion. 

As wings are common to almost the whole class, I shall consider their 
structure here. Every wing consists of two membranes, more or less 
transparent, applied to each other: the upper membrane being very strongly 
attached to the nervures (newre), and the lower adhering more loosely, 
so as to be separable from them. The nervures? are a kind of hollow 
tube,—above elastic, horny, and convex; and flat and nearly membrana- 
ceous below,—which take their origin in the trunk, and keep diminishing 
gradually, the marginal ones excepted, to their termination. The vessels 
contained in the nervures consist of a spiral thread, whence they appear 
to be air-vessels communicating with the trachee in the trunk. The 
expansion of the wing at the will of the insect isa problem that can only 
be solved by supposing that a subtile fluid is introduced into these ves- 
sels*, which seem perfectly analogous to those in the wings of birds, and 
that thus an impulse is communicated to every part of the organ sufficient 
to keep it in proper tension. We see by this, that a wing is supported 
in its flight like a sail by its cordage.* It is remarkable that those insects 
which keep the longest on the wing, the dragon-flies (Libellulina) for 


' Swamm. Bibl. Nat. ed. Hill, i. 24. De Geer, vii. 190. 

* French naturalists use this term (nervure) for the veins of wings, leaves, &c. restricting 
nerve (nerf) to the ramifications from the brain and spinal marrow. We have adopted the 
term, which we express in Latin by neura, from the Greek vevpa. 

% Recent observations by several distinguished microscopical naturalists fully confirm 
this opinion. 

* Jurine, Hymenopt. 19. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 505. 


instance, have their wings most covered with nervures. ‘The wings of 
insects in flying, like those of other flymg animals, you are to observe, 
move vertically, or up and down. 

In considering the flight of insects, I shall treat of that of each order 
separately, beginning with the Coleoptera or beetles. Their subsidiary 
instruments of flight are their wing-cases (elytra), and in one instance 
winglets (alule). The former, which in some are of a hard horny sub- 
stance, and in others are softer and more like leather, though they are kept 
immovable in flight, are probably, by their resistance to the air, not with- 
out their use on this occasion. The winglets are small concavo-convex 
scales, of a stiff membranaceous substance, generally fringed at their 
extremity. I know at present of only one coleopterous insect that has 
them (Dytiscus marginalis). They are placed under the elytra at their 
base. Their use is unknown; but it may probably be connected with 
their flight. The wings of beetles are usually very ample, often of a 
substance between parchment and membrane. ‘The nervures that traverse 
and extend them, though not numerous, are stronger and larger than 
those in the wings of insects of the other orders, and are so dispersed as 
fo give perfect tension to the organ. When at rest—except in Molorchus, 
Atractocerus, Necydalis, and some other genera—they are folded trans- 
versely under the elytra, generally near the middle, with a lateral longi- 
tudinal fold, but occasionally near the extremity. When they prepare for 
flight, their antenne being set out, the elytra are opened so as to form an 
angle with the body and admit the free play of the wings; and they 
then fly off, striking the air by the vertical motion of these organs, the 
elytra all the while remaining immovable. The Cetone, however, as 
noticed by M. Audouin, differ from most if not all other coleopterous 
insects in keeping their elytra closed during their flight." During -their flight 
the bodies of insects of this order, as far as I have observed them, are always 
in a position nearly vertical, which gives to the larger sorts, the stag-beetle 
for instance, a very singular appearance. Olivier, probably having some 
of the larger and heavier beetles in his eye, affirms that the wings of 
insects of this order are not usually proportioned to the weight of their 
bodies, and that the muscular apparatus that moves them is deficient in 
force. In consequence of which, he observes, they take flight with diffi- 
culty, and fly very badly. The strokes of their wings being frequent, 
and their flight short, uncertain, heavy, and laborious, they can use their 
wings only in very calm weather, the least wind beating them down. 
Yet he allows that others, whose body is lighter, rise into the air and fly 
with a little more ease, especially when the weather is warm and dry; 
their flights, however, being short, though frequent. He asserts also, that 
no coleopterous insect can fly against the wind.? These observations may 
hold, perhaps, with respect to many species; but they will by no means 
apply generally. The cockchafer (Melontha vulgaris), if thrown into 
the air in the evening, its time of flight, will take wing before it falls to 
the ground. The common dung-chafer (Geotrupes stercorarius)—wheel- 
ing from side to side like the humble-bee—flies with great rapidity and 
force, and, with all its dung-devouring confederates, directs its flight with 
the utmost certainty, and probably often against the wind, toits food. The 
oe rs Oe Bis roy SR go 2k 


1 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, viii. p. xlviii. 2 Entomol. i. 1. 


43 


506 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


root devourers or tree-chafers (Melolontha, Hoplia, &c.) support themselves, 
like swarming bees, in the air, and over the treés, flying round in all 
directions. ‘The Brachyptera and Donacia, in warm weather, fly off from 
their station with the utmost ease ;—their wings are unfolded, and they 
are in the air in an instant, especially the latter, as I have often found 
when I have attempted to take them. None are more remarkable for this 
than the Cicindele, which, however, taking very short flights, are as easily 
marked down as a partridge, and afford as much amusement to the ento- 
mologist as the latter to the sportsman. It is to be observed that many 
insects in this order have no wings, and the female glow-worms neither 
wings nor elytra. 

Many persons are not aware that the insects of the next order, the 
Dermaptera, can fly ; but earwigs (Forficula), their size considered, are 
furnished with very ample and curious wings, the principal nervures of 
which are so many radii, diverging from a common point near the anterior 
margin. Between these are others, which, proceeding from the opposite 
margin, terminate in the middle of the wing. These organs, when at 
rest, are more than once folded both transversely and longitudinally. 

Wings equally ample, forming the quadrant of a circle, and with five 
or six nervures diverging from their base, distinguish the Strepsipterous 
tribe. When unemployed, these are folded longitudinally.’ 

Probably in the next order (Orthoptera) the tegmina, or wing-covers— 
since they are usually of a much thinner substance than elytra—assist 
them in flying. They are, however, quite covered by irregular reticula- 
tions, produced by various nervures sent forth by the longitudinal ones, 
and running in all directions. When at rest, the inner part of one laps 
over that of the other ; but in different genera there is a singular variation 
in this circumstance. Thus in Blatta, Phasma, and male Acride, and 
generally speaking, but not invariably, in Locusta, and Trusalis, the left 
elytrum laps over the right ; but in Mantis, Mantispa, some female Acride, 
Gryllus, and Gryllotalpa, the right is laid over the left. The wings in 
this order, though always ample and larger than the tegmina, do not 
invariably form a quadrant of a circle, falling often short of it. They are 
extended by means of nervures, which, like so many rays, diverge from 
the base of the wing ; and are intersected alternately by transverse ones, 
which thus form quadrangular areas, arranged like bricks in a wall. When 
at rest, they are longitudinally folded. The flight of these insects, as far 
as it has been observed, much resembles, it is said, that of certain birds, 
Ray tells us that both sexes of the house-cricket (Gryllus domesticus) fly 
with an undulating motion, like a woodpecker, alternately ascending with 
expanded wings, and descending with folded ones.2 The field and mole- 
crickets (Gryllus campestris and Gryllotalpa vulgaris), as we learn from 
Mr. White®,—and, since the structure of their wings is similar, probably 
the other Orthoptera,—fly in the same way. 

Hemipterous insects, with respect to their hemelytra, may be divided 
into two classes. Those in which they are all of the same substance— 


‘ Prate Il. Fic. 1. It has been ascertained that the spurious elytra of these insects are 
serviceable in their fight. As M. Latreille now allows this, he ought to have restored its 
original name, which he had altered, to this order. 

® Hist. Ins. 63, 3 Nat. Hist. ii. 82, 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 507 


varying from membrane to a leathery or horny crust'—and those in which 
the base and the apex are of different substances; the first being generally 
corneous, and the latter membranaceous.? The former or homopterous 
division includes the Cicadarie, Latr., Aphis, Chermes, Thrips, and Coc- 
cus ;—and the latter the heteropterous division, comprehending, besides 
the Geocorise Latr., Notenecta, Sigara, Nepa, Ranatra, and Naucoris of 
Fabricius. The posterior tibie of some of this last division (Lygeus 
phyllopus, foliaceus, &c. F'.) are furnished on each side with a foliaceous 
process—which may act the part of outriggers, and assist them in their 
flight? I can give you no particular information with respect to the aérial 
movements of the insects of this order: the British species that belong to 
it are generally so minute that it is not easy to trace them with the naked 
eye; and unless some kind optician, which is much to be wished, would 
invent a telescope by which the proceedings of insects could be examined 
at a distance, there is no other way of studying them. 

The four wings of the next order, the Trichoptera or case-worm flies, 
both in their shape and nervures resemble those of many moths*; only 
instead of scales they are usually covered with hairs, and the under wings, 
which are larger than the upper, fold longitudinally. Some of these flies, 
I have observed, move in a direct line, with their legs set out, which 
makes them look as if they were walking in the air. In flying they often 
apply their antenne to each other, stretching them out straight, and thus 
probably are assisted in their motion. 

The Lepidoptera vary so infinitely in the shape, comparative magnitude, 
and appendages of their wings, that I should detain you too long did I 
enlarge upon so multifarious a subject. I shall therefore only observe, 
that one species is described, both by Lyonet and De Geer® (Lobophora 
hexaptera), as having six wings; for, besides the four ordinary ones, it 
has a winglet (alula) attached to the base of the lower one, and placed, 
when the wings are folded, between it and the upper. These organs in 
this order, you know, are covered with scales of various shapes. Their 
nervures are diverging rays, which issue either from a basal area or from 
the base itself, and terminate in the exterior margin. The wings of many 
male butterflies, hawk-moths, and moths, are distinguished by a remarka- 
ble apparatus, noticed by De Geer, and since by many other naturalists’, 
for keeping them steady and underanged in their flight, ‘The upper wings, 
on their under side near their base, have a minute process, bent into a 
hook (hamus), and covered with hairs and scales. In this hook one or 
more bristles (tendo), attached to the base of the under wing, have their 
play. When the fly unfolds its wings, the hook does not quit its hold of 
the bristle, which moves to and fro in it as they expand or close. ‘The 
females, which seldom fly far, often have the bristles, but never the hook. 
The hairy tails of some insects (Sesia) belonging to the hawk-moth tribe 
are expanded when they fly, so as to forma kind of rudder, which enables 
them to steer their course with more certainty. 

The insects of this and of every other order, except the Coleoptera, 


1 Prate Il. Fic. 4. 2 Prate II. Fie. 5. 

3 I have separated this tribe from the rest under the name of Petalopu, K. Ms. 
4 Prate IID. Fie. 4. 

5 Lesser, |. i. 109, note*. De Geer, ii, 460. t. ix. f. 9. 

6 De Geer, i. 173. t. x. f. 4. Linn. Trans. i, 135. 


508 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


fly with their bodies in a horizontal position, or nearly so. As their wings 
are usually so ample, we need not wonder that*the Lepidoptera are 
excellent fliers. Indeed they seem to flit untired from flower to flower, 
and from field to field; impelled at one while by hunger, and at another 
by love or maternal solicitude. The distance to which some males will 
fly is astonishing. That of one of the silk-worm moths (Attacus Paphia) 
is stated to travel sometimes more than a hundred miles in this way.’ 
Our most beautiful butterfly, the purple emperor (Apatura Iris), when 
he makes his first appearance fixes his throne on the summit of some 
lofty oak, from whence in sunny days, unattended by his empress, who 
does not fly, he takes his excursions. Launching into the air from one 
of the highest twigs, he mounts often to so great a height as to become 
invisible. When the sun is at the meridian his loftiest flights take place ; 
and about four in the afternoon he resumes his station of repose.? The 
large bodies of hawk-moths (Sphinx F.) are carried by wings remarkably 
strong both as to nervures and texture, and their flight is proportionably 
rapid and direct. That of butterflies is by dipping and rising alternately, 
so as to form a zigzag line with vertical angles, which the animal often 
describes with a skipping motion, so that each zigzag consists of smaller 
ones. ‘This doubtless renders it more difficult for the birds to take them 
as they fly; and thus the male, when paired, often flits away with the 
female. 

Amongst the neuropterous tribes the most conspicuous insects are the 
dragon-flies (Libellulina), which—their metamorphosis, habits, mode of 
life, and characters considered—form a distinct and natural order of them- 
selves. Their four wings, which are nearly equal in size, are a complete 
and beautiful piece of net-work, resembling the finest lace, the meshes 
of which are usually filled by a pure, transparent, glassy membrane. In 
two of the genera belonging to this tribe the wings, when the animal is 
at rest, are always expanded, so that they can take flight in an instant, 
no previous unfolding of these organs being necessary. In Agrion, the 
other genus of the tribe, the wings when they repose are not expanded. 
I have observed of these insects, and also of several others in different 
orders, that without turning they can fly in all directions—backwards, and 
to the right and left, as well as forwards. This ability to fly all ways, 
without having to turn, must be very useful to them when pursued by a 
bird. Leeuwenhoek ofce saw a swallow chasing an insect of this tribe, 
which he calls a Mordella,in a menagerie about a hundred feet long. 
The little creature flew with such astonishing velocity—to the right, to 
the left, and in all directions—that this bird of rapid wing and ready 
evolution was unable to overtake and entrap it; the insect eluding every 
attempt, and being generally six feet before it. Indeed, such is the 
power of the long wings by which the dragon-flies are distinguished, par- 


1 Linn. Trans. vii. 40. 

* Haworth, Lepidopt. Brit. i. 19. Mr. Hewitson, in an interesting notice of this species, 
informs us that at Kissingen in Bavaria, where he had an opportunity of observing its habits 
in June and July, 1839, afier long and rapid flights in the outskirts of a neighboring forest, 
they would enter its most shady recesses to coo] themselves, and lap the moisture from any 

uddles of water (preferring the most filthy) with their long trunks ; and were so eager 

in this occupation that he has had seven under a small flat net at once, and could even take 
them readily with his finger and thumb. (Entomologist, June, 1842, p. 324.) 

3 Leeuw. Epist. 6. Mart. 1717. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 509 


ticularly in Alshna and Libellula, and such the force of the muscles that 
move them, that they seem never to be wearied with flying. I have 
observed one of the former genus (Anax tmperator Leach) sailing for 
hours over a piece of water—sometimes to and fro, and sometimes wheel- 
ing from side to side; and all the while chasing, capturing, and devouring 
the various insects that came athwart its course, or driving away its com- 
petitors—without ever seeming tired, or inclined to alight. Another 
species (Aishna variegata), very common in lanes and along hedges, 
which flies, like the Orthoptera, in a waving line, is equally alert and 
active after its prey. This, however, often alights for a moment, and 
then resumes its gay excursive flights. A Libellula, resembling this last 
insect, flew on board the vessel in which Mr. Davis was sailing, Dec. 11, 
1837, when at sea, and the nearest land was the coast of Africa, 500 
miles distant—a striking proof of its powers of wing. The species of 
the geyus Agrion cut the air with less velocity ; but so rapid is the motion 
of their wings that they become quite invisible. Hawking always about 
for prey, the Agrions, from the variety of the colors of different indi- 
viduals, form no uninteresting object during a summer stroll. With 
respect to the mode of flight of the other neuropterous tribes I have 
nothing to remark; for that of the Ephemere, which has been most 
noticed, I shall consider under another head. 

The next order of insects, the Hymenoptera, attract also general atten- 
tion as fliers, and from our earliest years. ‘The ferocious hornet, with its 
trumpet of terror; the intrusive and indomitable wasp ; the booming and 
pacific humble-bee, the frequent: prey of merciless schoolboys ; and that 
universal favorite, the industrious inhabitant of the hive,—all belonging 
to it,—are familiar to every one ; and in summer there is scarcely a flower 
or leaf in field or garden, which is not visited by some of its numerous 
tribes. The four wings of these insects, the upper pair of which are 
larger than the under, vary much in their nervures. From the saw-flies 
(Serrifera), whose wings are nearly as much reticulated as those of some 
Neuroptera, to the minute Chalets and Psilus, in which these organs are 
without nervures, there is every intermediate variety of reticulation that 
can be imagined.* It has been observed that the nervures of the wings 
are usually proportioned to the weight of the insect. Thus the saw-flies 
have generally bodies thicker than those of most other Hymenoptera, 
while those that have fewer nervures are more slender. This, however, 
does not hold. good in all cases—so that the dimensions and cut of the 
wings, the strength of their nervures, and the force of their muscles, must 
also be taken into consideration, The wings of many of these insects, 
when expanded, are kept in the same plane by means of small hooks 
(Aamuli) in the anterior margin of the under wing, which lay hold of the 
posterior margin of the upper.® Another peculiarity also distinguishes 
them. Base covers (tegule), or small concavo-convex shields, protect 
the base of the wings from injury* or displacement. 

The most powerful fliers in this order are the humble-bees, which, like 
the dung-chafers (Geotrupes), traverse the air in segments of a circle, the 


» Entom. Mag. v. 251. * Jurine, Hymenopt. t. 2—5. 
3 Kirby, Mon. Ap. Angl. i. 96. 108. . xiii. f. 19. 
* Kirby, Mon. Ap. Angi. i. 96. 107. t. v. f. 8. dd. 


43* 


510 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


are of which is alternately to right and left. The rapidity of their flight 
is so great that, could it be calculated, it would be*found, the size of the 
creature considered, far to exceed that of any bird, as has been proved by 
the observations of a traveler in a railway carriage proceeding at the rate 
of twenty miles an hour, which was accompanied, though the wind was 
against them, for a considerable distance by a humble-bee (Bombus subin- 
terruptus K.), not merely with the same rapidity, but even greater, as it 
not unfrequently flew to and fro about the carriage or described zigzag 
lines in its-flight.!. The aérial movements of the hive-bee are more direct 
and leisurely. When leaving the hive for an excursion, I have observed 
that as soon as they come out they turn about as if to survey the entrance, 
and then, wheeling round in a circle, fly off. When they return to the 
hive, they often fly from side to side, as if to examine before they alight, 
When swarming, the heads of all are turned towards the group at the 
mouth of their dwelling ; and upon rising into the air these little creatures 
fly so thick in every direction, as to appear like a kind of net-work with 
meshes of every angle. The queen also, upon going forth, when her 
object is to pair, after returning to reconnoitre, begins her flight by 
deseribing circles of considerable diameter, thus rising spirally with a rapid 
motion. The object of these gyrations is probably to increase her chance 
of meeting with a drone. Ihave not much to tell you with respect to 
the flight of other insects of this order, except that a spider-wasp (Pom- 
pilus viaticus), whose sting is redoubtable, and which often, when we are 
in the vicinity of sandy sunny banks, accompanies our steps, has a kind of 
jumping moyement when it flies, 

The next order, the Diptera, consists altogether of two-winged flies ; 
but, to replace the under wings of the tetrapterous insects, they are fur- 
nished with poisers, and numbers of them also with winglets. The peisers 
(halteres) are little membranaceous threads placed one under the origin of 

‘each wing, near a spiracle, and terminated by an oval, round, or triangular 
button, which seems capable of dilatation and contraction. ‘The animal 
moves these organs with great vivacity, often when at rest, and probably 
when flying. Their winglets (alule) are different from those of Dytiseus 
marginalis, and the moth before noticed, Like them, they are of rigid 
membrane, and fringed ; but they consist generally of two concavo-convex 
pieces (sometimes surrounded by a nervure), situated between the wing 
and the poisers, which, when the insect reposes, fold over each other like 
the valves of a bivalve shell; but when it flies they are extended. The 
use of neither of these organs seems to have been satisfactorily ascertained. 
Dr. Derham thinks they are for keeping the body steady in flight; and 
asserts that if either a poiser or winglet be cut off, the insect will fly as if 
one side overbalanced the other, till it falls to the ground ; and that if both 
be cut off, they will fy awkwardly and unsteadily, as if they had lost some 
very necessary part.? Shelver cut off the winglets of a fly, leaving both 
wings and poisers, but it could no longer fly. He next cut off the poisers 
of another, leaving the wings and winglets, and the same result followed. 
He found, upon removing one of these organs, that they were not properly 
compared to balancers. Observing that a common crane-fly (Tipula 


1 Philos. May., quoted in Burmeister’s Manual of Ent, 464. * Huber, i. 38, 
§ Phys. Theol. 13th ed. 366, note (i.) 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 511 


erocata) moved the knee of the hinder tibia in connection with the wing 
and poiser, he cut it off, and it could no longer fly: this last experiment, 
however, seems contradicted by the fact, which has been often observed, 
that the insects of this genus will fly when half their legs are gone. He 
afterwards cut off both its poisers, when it could neither fly nor walk. 
Hence he conjectures that the poisers are connected with the feet, and 
are air-holders.!- I have often seen flies move their poisers very briskly 
when at rest, particularly Sezoptera vibrans, before mentioned. ‘This ren- 
ders Shelver’s conjecture—that they are connected with respiration—not 
improbable. Perhaps by their action some effect may be produced upon 
the spiracle in their vicinity, either as to the opening or closing of it. 

There are three classes of fliers in this order, the form of whose bodies, 
as well as the shape and circumstances of their wings, is different. First 
are the slender flies—the gnats, gnat-like flies, and crane-fltes (T%pularia). 
The bodies of these are light, their wings narrow, and their legs long, and 
they have no winglets. Next are those whose bodies, though slender, are 
more weighty—the <Asilide, Conopside, &c.; these have larger wings, 
shorter legs, and very minute and sometimes even obsolete winglets. 
Lastly come the flies, the Muscidae, &c., and their affinities, whose bodies 
being short, thick, and often very heavy, are furnished not only with pro- 
portionate wings and shorter legs, but also with conspicuous winglets. 
From these comparative differences and distinctions, we may conjecture in 
the first place—since the lightest bodies are furnished with the longest legs, 
and the heaviest with the shortest—that the legs act as poisers and rudders, 
that keep them steady while they fly, and assist them in directing their 
course; and in the next—since the winglets are largest in the heaviest 
bodies, and altogether wanting in the lightest—that one of their principal 
uses is to assist the wings when the insect is flying. 

The flight of the Tipularian genera is very various. Sometimes, as I 
have observed, they fly up and down with a zigzag course; at others in 
vertical curves of small diameter, like some birds; at others, again, in 
horizontal curves: all these lines they describe with a kind of skipping 
motion. Sometimes they would seem to flit in every possible way— 
upwards, downwards, athwart, obliquely, and sometimes almost in circles. 
The common gnat (Culex pipiens) seems to sail along also in various direc- 
tions. ‘The motion of its wings, if it does not fly like a hawk, is so rapid 
as not to be perceptible. When the crane-fly (Tipula oleracea) is upon 
the wing, its fore-legs are placed horizontally, pointing forwards, and the 
four hind ones stretched out in an opposite direction, the one forming the 
prow and the other the stern of the vessel, in its voyage through the ocean 
of air. The legsof another insect of this tribe (Hirtea Marc?) all point 
towards the anus in flight, the long anterior pair forming an acute angle 
with the body :—thus, perhaps, it can better cut the air. 

I have often been amused in my walks with the motions of the hornet- 
fly (Asilus crabroniformis), belonging to the second division just mentioned. 
This insect is carnivorous, living upon small flies. When you are taking 
your rambles, you may often observe it alight just before you; as soon as 


 Wiedemann’s Archiv. ii. 210. ud 

* To those that frequent meadows and pastures (Tipula oleracea L. &c.) they are also 
_ useful as I have before observed, as stilts, to enable them to walk over the grass. Reaum. 
v. Pref. i. t. iii. f 10. 


512 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


you come up, it flies a little further, and will thus be your avant-courier 
for the whole length of a long field. This usually takes place, I seem to 
have observed, when a path lies under a hedge; and perhaps the object 
of this manceuvre may be the capture of prey. Your motions may drive 
a number of insects before you, and so be instrumental in supplying it with 
ameal. Other species of the genus have the same habit. 

The aérial progress of the fly-tribes, including the gad-flies (stride), 
horse-flies (Tabanide), carrion-flies (Muscide), and many other genera— 
which constitute the heavy horse amongst our two-winged fliers—is won- 
derfully rapid, and usually in a direct line. An Cstrus about to attack a 
horse urged to its full speed will yet keep close to it, and, at last, when 
foiled in its object, fly away before it ata still more rapid rate. The 
male Tabani, according to the observations of M. de St. Fargeau, when 
met with in the long avenues of the continental forests, are seen to dart 
impetuously from one end to the other, then to rest a while immovable, 
suspended in the air, and look around on every side, and again to rush 
with equal velocity to the other end, repeating these manceuvres till they 
have discovered a female, upon which they precipitate themselves, and 
then mount together to a height which the eye cannot reach.? An anony- 
mous observer in Nicholson’s Journal® calculates that, in its ordinary 
flight, the common house-fly (Musca domestica) makes with its wings about 
600 strokes, which carry it five feet, every second. But if alarmed, he 
states, their velocity can be increased six or seven-fold, or to thirty or 
thirty-five feet in the same period. In this space of time, a race-horse 
could clear only ninety feet, which is at the rate of more than a mile in a 
minute. Our little fly, in her swiftest flight, will in the same space of 
time go more than the third of a mile. Now compare the infinite diffe- 
rence of the size of the two animals (ten millions of the fly would hardly 
counterpoise one racer), and how wonderful will the velocity of this minute 
creature appear! Did the fly equal the race-horse in size, and retain its 
present powers in the ratio of its magnitude, it would traverse the globe 
with the rapidity of lightning. I would here observe, however, that it 
seems to me, that it is not by muscular strength alone that many insects 
are enabled to keep so long upon the wing. Every one who attends to 
them must have noticed, that the velocity and duration of their flights 
depend much upon the heat or coolness of the atmosphere, especially the 
appearance of the sun. ‘The warmer and more unclouded his beam, the 
more insects are there upon the wing, and every diurnal species seems 
fitted for longer or more frequent excursions. 

Having given you all the information that I can collect with respect to 
the motions of perfect insects in the air, I must next say something con- 
cerning their modes of locomotion in or upon the water. These are of 
two kinds, swimming and walking. Observe—I call that movement 
swimming, in which the animal pushes itself along by strokes—while in 
walking, the motion of the legs is not different from what it would be if 
they were on land. Most insects that swim have their posterior legs 
peculiarly fitted for it, either by a dense fringe of hairs on the shank and 
foot, as in the water-beetles (Dytiscus), or the water-boatmen (Notonecta) : 


' Burmeister, Manual of Ent. 463. 
* Macquart, Diptéres, i, 20. 191, 3 4to. iii. 36. 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 513 


or by having their terminal joints very much dilated—as in the whirlgig 
(Gyrinus)—so as to resemble the paddle of an oar. When the Dytisci 
rise to the surface to take in fresh air—a silver bubble of which may often _ 
be seen suspended at their anus—they ascend, as it should seem, merely 
in consequence of their being specifically lighter than the water; but 
when they descend or move horizontally, which they do with considerable 
rapidity, it is by regular and successive strokes of their swimming legs. 
While they remain suspended at the surface, these legs are extended so as 
to form a right angle with their body. The water-boatmen swim upon 
their back, which enables them to see readily and seize the insects that 
fall upon the water, which are their prey. Stgara, however, a cognate 
genus, separated from Notonecta by Fabricius, swims in the ordinary way. 
As the Gyrini are usually in motion at the surface, whirling round and 
round in circles, it is probable that their legs are best adapted to this move- 
ment. ‘They dive down, however, with great ease and velocity when 
alarmed, ‘The common water-bug (Gerris lacustris), though it never 
goes under water, will sometimes swim upon the surface, which it does by 
strokes of the intermediate and posterior legs.2 These, however, are 
neither fringed nor dilated, but very long, and slender, with claws, not 
easily detected, situated under the apex of the last joint of the foot, which 
covers and conceals them. ‘The under side of their body—as is the case 
with Elophorus, and many other aquatic insects—is clothed with a thick 
coat of gray hairs like satin, which in certain lights have no small degree 
of lustre, and protect its body from the effects of the water. Some insects, 
that are not naturally aquatic, if they fall into the water will swim very 
well. I once saw a kind of grasshopper (Acrydium), which by the pow- 
erful strokes of its hind legs pushed itself across a stream with great 
rapidity. 

Other insects walk, as it were, in the water, moving their legs in much 
the same way as they do on the land. Many smaller species of water- 
beetles, belonging to the genera Hydrophilus, Elophorus, Hydrena, Par- 
nus, Limnius, &c., thus win their way in the waves.—Thus also the 
water-scorpion (Nepa) pursues its prey; and the little water-mites (Hy- 
drachna) may be seen in every pool thus working their little legs with 
great rapidity, and moving about in all directions.—Some spiders also will 
not only traverse the surface of the waters, but as you have heard with 
respect to one, descend into their bosom. ‘There are other insects moving 
in this way that are not divers. Of this kind are the aquatic bugs (Gerris 
lacustris, Hydrometra stagnorum, Velia rivulorum, &c. Latr.) The first 
can walk, run, and even leap, which it does upon its prey, as well as 
swim upon the surface. The second, remarkable for its extreme slender- 
ness, and for its prominent hemispherical eyes—which, though they are 
really in the head, appear to be in the middle of the body—rambles about 
in chase of other insects, in considerable numbers, in most stagnant waters. 
The Velia is to be met with chiefly in running streams and rivers, coursing 
very rapidly over their waves. The two last species neither jump nor 
swim. ‘The species of one genus of this group (Halobates Eschscholtz) 


— = 


’ Mr. Briggs observes that this insect appears to move all its legs at once, with wonderful 
rapidity, by which motion it produces a radiating vibration on the surface of the water. 
2 De Geer, iii. 314. 3 Curtis, Brit. Ent. t. ii. 


514 MOTIONS OF INSECTS, 


course about on the surface of the sea between the tropics, and are remarka- 
ble for being the only insects that have adopted the sea for their abode’, 
at least if we except the genera of beetles Mpus, Pogonus, Bledius, 
’ Hesperophilus, &c., which burrow in the sand while covered with the 
tide, and thus are partially inhabitants of. the ocean. One species of 
Halobates (H. Streatfieldana Templeton) was captured nearly midway 
between the continent of Africa and America, by Colonel Streatfield, 87th 
R. T. F., where numbers of them attended the Meduse.? 

I am next to say a few words upon the motions of insects that burrow, 
either to conceal themselves or their young. Though burrowing is not 
always a locomotion, I shall consider it under this head, to preserve the 
unity of the subject. Many enter the earth by means of fore-legs partic- 
ularly formed for the purpose. The flat dentated anterior shanks, with 
slender feet, that distinguish the chafers (Petalocera)—most of which in 
their first states live under ground, and many occasionally in their last— 
enable them to make their way either into the earth or out of it. Two other 
genera of beetles (Scarites and Clivinia Latr.) have these shanks pal- 

_ mated, or armed with longer teeth at their extremity, for the same purpose. 
_ But the most remarkable burrower amongst perfect insects is that singular 
animal the mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris).4 This creature is endowed 

with wonderful strength, particularly in its thorax and fore-legs. The 
former is a very hard and solid shell or crust, covering like a shield the 
trunk of the animal; and the latter are remarkably fitted for burrowing, 
both by their strength and construction. ‘The shanks are very broad, and 
terminate obliquely in four enormous sharp teeth, like so many fingers: 
the foot consists of three joints—the two first being broad and tooth-shaped, 
and pointing in an opposite direction to the teeth of the shank; and the 
last small, and armed at the extremity with two sharp claws. This foot 
is placed inside the shank, so as to resemble a thumb, and perform the 
office of one. The direction and motion of these hands, as in moles, is 
outwards ; thus enabling the animal most effectually to remove the earth 
when it burrows. By the help of these powerful instruments; it is aston- 
ishing how instantaneously it buries itself. This creature works under 
ground like a field-mouse, raising a ridge as it goes; but it does not throw 
up heaps like its name-sake the mole. They will in this manner under- 
mine whole gardens; and thus in wet and swampy situations, in which 
they delight, they excavate their curious apartments, before described. 
The field-cricket (Gryllus campestris) is also. a burrower, but by means of 
different instruments ; for with its strong jaws, toothed like the claws of a 
lobster, but sharper, in heaths and other dry situations it perforates and 
rounds its curious and regular cells. The house-cricket (G. domesticus), 
which, on account of the softness of the mortar, delights, in new-built 
houses, with the same organs, to make herself a covered-way from room 
to room, burrows and mines between the joints of the bricks and stones.® 

But of all the burrowing tribes, none are so numerous as those of the 
order Hymenoptera. Wherever you see a bare bank, of a sunny expo- 
sure, you usually find it full of the habitations of these insects ;—and 


' Burmeister, Manual of Ent. 567. * Spence in Tyans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 180. 
3 Templeton in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 230. 


4 Prats II. Fic, 2. 5 White, Nat. Hist. ii. 72. 76. 80. 


4 


‘ 


* 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 515 


almost every rail and old piece of timber is with the same view perforated 
by them. Bees, wasps, bee-wasps (Bembex), spider-wasps (Pompilus), 
fly-wasps (Mellinus, Cerceris; Crabro), with many others, excavate sub- 
terranean or ligneous habitations for their young. None is more remarka- 
ble in this respect than the sand-wasp (Ammophila). It digs its burrows, 
by scratching with its fore-legs like a dog ora rabbit, dispersing with its, 
hind ones, which are particularly constructed for that purpose, the sand so 
collected. 

Since most of these burrows are designed for the reception of the eggs 
of the burrowers, I shall next describe to you the manner in which one of 
the long-legged gnats, or crane-flies (Tipula variegata)—a proceeding to 
which I was myself a witness—oviposits. Choosing a south bank bare 
of grass, she stood with her legs stretched out on each side, and kept 
turning herself half round backwards and forwards alternately. Thus 
the ovipositor, which terminates her long cylindrical pointed abdomen, 
made its way into the hard soil, and deposited her eggs in a secure situa- 
tion. All, however, were not committed to the same burrow ; for she 
every now and then shifted her station, but not more than an inch from 


where she bored last. While she was thus engaged, I observed her male - 


companion suspended by one of his legs on a twig, not far from her. ‘The 
common turf-boring crane-fly (T’. oleracea), when engaged in laying eggs, 
moves over the grass with her body in a vertical position, by the help— 
her four anterior legs being in the air—of her two posterior ones, and the 
end of her abdomen, which performs the office of another. Whether in 
boring, like T° variegata, she turns half round and back, does not appear 
from Reaumur’s account.” 

I now come to motions whose object seems to be sport and amusement 
rather than locomotion. They may be considered as of three kinds— 
hovering—gyrations—and dancing. 

You have often in the woods and other places seen flies suspended as it 
were in the air, their wings all the while moving so rapidly as to be almost 
invisible. ‘This hovering, which seems peculiar to: the aphidivorous flies, 


has been also noticed by De Geer.? I have frequently amused myself. 


with watching them; but when I have endeavored to entrap them with 
my forceps, they have immediately shifted their quarters, and resumed 
their amusement elsewhere. That their object is simply amusement seems 
proved by the fact noticed by Mr. Curtis, that “if you catch a dozen in 
your morning’s walk, they are all males who are thus enjoying themselves.”4 
The most remarkable insects in this respect are the sphinxes, and from 
this they doubtless took their name of hawk-moths. When they unfold 
their long tongue, and wipe its sweets from any nectariferous flower, they 
always keep upon the wing, suspending themselves over it till they have 
exhausted them, when they fly away to another. ‘The species called by 
collectors the humming-bird (Macroglossa stellatarum), and by some per- 
sons mistaken for a real one, is remarkable for this, and the motion of its 
wings is inconceivably rapid.° 

The gyrations of insects take place either when they are reposing, or 

1 Linn, Trans. ivy. 200. See Westw. in Trans. Ent. Soc. vol. i. p. 198..0n the construction 
of the barrows of this and some allied species. 


2 v. 20. 3 vi. 104, 


4 Gardener’s Chronicle, 1841, p. 52. 
5 Rai. Hist. Ins. 133. 1. 


wane”. 


516 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


when they are flying or swimming.—I was once mugh diverted by obsery- 
ing the actions of a minute moth upon a leaf on which it was stationed. 
Making its head the centre of its revolutions, it turned round and round 
with considerable rapidity, as if it had the vertigo, for some time.’ I did 
not, however, succeed in my attempts to take it.—Scaliger noticed a simi- 
lar motion in the book-crab (Chelifer cancroides).? 

Reaumur describes in a very interesting and lively way the gyrations of 
the Ephemere, before noticed, round a lighted flambeau. It is singular, 
says he, that moths which fly only in the night, and shun the day, should 
be precisely those that come to seek the light in our apartments. It is 
still more extraordinary that these Ephemere—which appearing after 
sunset, and dying before sunrise, are destined never to behold the light 
of that orb—should have so strong an inclination for any luminous object. 
To hold a flambeau when they appeared was no very pleasant office ; for 
he who filled it, in a few seconds had his dress covered with the insects, 
which rushed from all quarters to him. The light of the flambeau 
exhibited a spectacle which enchanted every one that beheld it. All 
that were present, even the most ignorant and stupid of his domestics, 
were never satisfied with looking at it. Never had any armillary sphere 
sO many zones, as there were here circles, which had the light for their 
centre. There was an infinity of them—crossing each other in all direc- 
tions, and of every imaginable inclination—all of which were more or 
less eccentric. Each zone was composed of an unbroken string of 
Ephemera, resembling a piece of silver lace formed inte a circle deeply 
notched, and consisting of equal triangles placed end to end (so that one of 
the angles’of that which followed touched the middle of the base of that 
which preceded),.and moving with astonishing rapidity. The wings of 
the flies, which was all of them that could then be distinguished, formed 
this appearance. Each of these creatures, after having described one 
or two orbits, fell upon the earth or into the water, but not in consequence 
of being burned. Reaumur was one of the most accurate of ‘observers ; 
and yet I suspect that the appearance he describes was a visual deception, 
and for the following reason. I was once walking in the day-time with 
a friend*, when our attention was caught by myriads of small flies, which 
were dancing under every tree ;—viewed in a certain light they appeared 
a concatenated series of insects (as Reaumur has here described his 
Ephemere) moving in a spiral direction upwards ;—but each series, upon 
close examination, we found was produced by the astonishingly rapid 
movement of a single fly. Indeed, when we consider the space that a fly 
will pass through in a second, it is not wonderful that the eye should be 
unable to trace its gradual progress, or that it should appear present in 
the whole space at the same instant. The fly we saw was a small male- 
Ichneuman. 

Other circular motions of sportive insects take place in the water. 
Linné, in his Lapland tour, noticed a black Tipula which ran over the 
water, and turned round like a whirlwig, or Gyrinus.® This last insect I 


1 Mr. Westwood informs us that he has repeatedly observed the same proceeding and that 
the insect is Simaethis fabriciana. 

2 Lesser, 1. j. 248, note 22. 3 Reaum. vi. 484. t. xlv. f. 7. 

* The persons observing the appearance here related were the authors of this work. 

® Lach. Lapp. i. 194. 


- 


MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 517 


have often mentioned ;—it seems the merriest and most agile of all the 
inhabitants of the waves. Wonderful is the velocity with which they 


. 


turn round and round, as it were pursuing each other in incessant circles, | 


sometimes moving in oblique, and indeed in every other direction. Now 
and then they repose on the surface, as if fatigued with their dances, and 
desirous of enjoying the full effect of thesun-beam: if you approach they 
are instantaneously in motion again. Attempt to entrap them with your 
net, and they are under the water and dispersed ina moment. When 
the danger ceases they reappear, and resume their vagaries. Covered 
with lucid armor, when the sun shines they look like little dancing masses 
of silver or brilliant pearls.' 

But the motions of this kind to which I particularly wish to call your 
attention are the choral dances of males in the air; for the dancing sex 
amongst insects is the masculine, the ladies generally keeping themselves 
quiet at home. ‘These dances occur at all seasons of the year, both in 
winter and summer, though in the former season they are confined 


to the hardy Tipularie. In the morning before twelve, the Hoplia, root- . 


beetles before mentioned, have their dances in the air, and the solstitial 
and common cockchafer appear in the evening—the former generally 
coming forth at the summer solstice—and fill the air over the trees and 
hedges with their myriads and their hum. Other dancing insects resem- 
ble moving columns—each individual rising and falling in a vertical line 
a certain space, and which will follow the passing traveler—often intent 
upon other business, and all unconscious of his aérial companions—for a 
considerable distance. 

Towards sunset the common Ephemere (E. vulgata), distinguished by 
their spotted wings and three long tails (caudule), commence their dances 
in the meadows near the rivers. ‘They assemble in troops, consisting 
sometimes of several hundreds, and keep rising and falling continually, 
usually over some high tree. They rise beating the air rapidly with their 
wings, till they have ascended five or six feet above the tree ; when they 
descend to it with their wings extended and motionless, sailing like hawks, 
and having their three tails elevated, and the lateral ones so separated as 
to form nearly a right angle with the central one. These tails seem 
given them to balance their bodies when they descend, which they do in 
a horizontal position. ‘This motion continues two or three hours without 
ceasing, and commences in fine clear weather about an hour before sun- 
-set, lasting till the copious falling of the dew compels them to retire to 
their nocturnal station.* Our most common species, which I have usually 
taken for the E. vulgata, varies from that of De Geer in its proceedings. 
I found them at the end of May dancing over the meadows, not over the 
trees, ata much earlier hour—at half-past three—rising in the way just 
described, about a foot, and then descending, at the distance of about 
four or five feet from the ground. Another species, common here, rises 
seven or eight feet. I have also seen Ephemere flying over the water in 


* Compare Oliv. Entomol. iii. Gyrinus 4. One speices, however, Gyrinus (Orechtocheilus) 
villosus, which, as before observed, pursues its dances only at night, differs also from its 
congeners in not having the same habit of diving, or at least not in the daytime, when, if 
forced into the water from its hiding-places under stones, all its efforts are confined to en- 
deavoring to regain the shore. (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, iv. bull. lxxx.) 

® De Geer, ii. 638. 

44 


518 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 


a horizontal direction. 'The females are sometimes in the air, when the 
males seize them, and they fly paired. These iffsects seem to use their 
fore-legs to break the air; they are applied together before the head, and 
look like antenne.—Hilara maura, a little beaked fly, I have observed 
rushing in infinite numbers like a shower of rain driven by the wind, as 
before observed, over waters, and then returning back. 

It is remarkable that the smaller Tvpularie will fly unwetted in a heavy 
shower of rain, as I have often observed. How keen must be their sight, 
and how rapid their motions, to enable them to steer between drops bigger 
than their own bodies, which, if they fell upon them, must dash them to 
the ground ! 

Amidst this infinite variety of motions, for purposes so numerous and 
diversified, and performed by such a multiplicity of instruments and organs, 
who does not discern and adore the Great First Mover? From him all 
proceed, by him all are endowed, in him all move: and it is to accomplish 
his ends, and to go on his errands, that these little but not insignificant 
beings are thus gifted; since it is by them that he maintains tbis terra- 
queous globe in order and beauty, thus rendering it fit for the residence 
of his creature man. 

Iam, &c. 


519 


LETTER XXIV. 
ON THE NOISES PRODUCED BY INSECTS. 


Tart insects, though they fill the air with a variety of sounds, have no 
voice, may seem to you a paradox, and you may be tempted to exclaim 
with the Roman naturalist, What, amidst this incessant diurnal hum of 
bees ; this evening boom of beetles; this nocturnal buzz of gnats ; this 
merry chirp of crickets and grasshoppers ; this deafening drum of Cicada, 
have insects no voice! If by voice we understand sounds produced by 
the air expelled from the lungs, which, passing through the larynx, is 
modified by the tongue, and emitted from the mouth,—it is even so. For 
no insect, like the larger animals, uses its mouth for utterance of any 
kind : in this respect they are all perfectly mute: and though incessantly 
noisy, are everlastingly silent. Of this fact the Stagyrite was not igno- 
rant, since, denying them a voice, he attributes the sounds emitted by 
insects to another cause. But if we feel disposed to give a larger extent 
to this word ; if we are of opinion that all sounds, however produced, by 
means of which animals determine those of their own species to certain 
actions, merit the name of voice; then I will grant that insects have a 
voice. But, decide this question as we will, we all know that by some 
means or other, at certain seasons and on various occasions, these little 
creatures make a great din in the world. I must therefore now bespeak 
your attention to this department of their history. 

In discussing this subject, I shall consider the noises insects emit— 
during their motions—when they are feeding, or otherwise employed— 
when they are calling or commanding—or when they are under the 
influence of the passions ; of fear, of anger, of sorrow, joy, or love. 

The only kind of locomotion during which these animals produce sounds 
is fying: for though the hill-ants (Formica rufa), as I formerly observed, 
make a rustling noise with their feet when walking over dry leaves, I 
know of no other insect the tread of which is accompanied by sound— 
except indeed the flea, whose steps, a Jady assures me, she always hears 
when it paces over her night-cap, and that it clicks as if it was walking in 
pattens! That the flight of numbers of insects is attended by a hum- 
ming or booming is known to almost every one; but that the great 
majority move through the air in silence, has not perhaps been so often 
observed. Generally speaking, those that fly with the greatest force and 
rapidity, and with wings seemingly motionless, make the most noise ; while 
those that fly gently and leisurely, and visibly fan the air with their wings, 
yield little or no sound. 

Amongst the beetle tribes (Coleoptera), none is more noticed, or more 
celebrated for “ wheeling its droning flight,” than the common dung-chafer 
(Geotrupes stercorarius) and its affinities. Linné affirms—but the prog- 
nostic sometimes fails—that when these insects fly in numbers, it indicates 


520 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


a subsequent fine day.! The truth is, they only flyyin fine weather. Mr. 
White has remarked, that in the dusk of the evening beetles begin to 
buzz, and that partridges begin to call exactly at the same time.” The 
common cock-chafer, and that which appears at the summer solstice 
(Melolontha vulgaris and Amphimalla solstitialis), when they hover over 
the summits of trees in numbers, produce a hum somewhat resembling 
that of bees swarming. Perhaps some insect of this kind may occasion 
the humming in the air mentioned by Mr. White, and which you and I 
have often heard in other places. ‘There is,” says he, ‘a natural 
occurrence to be met with in the highest part of our down on the hot 
summer days, which always amuses me much, without giving me any 
satisfaction with respect to the cause of it ;—and that is a loud audible 
humming of bees in the air, though not one insect is to be seen.—Any 
person would suppose that a large swarm of bees was in motion, and play- 
ing about over his head.’’? 
‘“Resounds the living surface of the ground— 
Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum 


To him who muses through the woods at noon, 
Or drowsy shepherd as he lies reclined.” 


The hotter the weather, the higher insects will soar; and it is not 
improbable that the sound produced by numbers may be heard, when those 
that produce it are out of sight. The burying-beetle (Necrophorus Ves- 
pillo), whose singular history so much amused you, as well as Cicindela 
sylvatica of the same order, flies likewise, as I have more than once wit- 
nessed, with a considerable hum. 

Whether the innumerable locust armies, to which I have so often called 
your attention, make any. noise in their flight, I have not been able to 
ascertain ; the mere impulse of the wings of myriads and myriads of these 
creatures upon the air must, one would think, produce some sound. In 
the symbolical locusts mentioned in the Apocalypse‘, this is compared to 
the sound of chariots rushing to battle: an illustration which the inspired 
author of that book would scarcely have had recourse to, if the real locusts 
winged their way in silence. 

Amongst the Hemiptera, I know only a single species that is of noisy 
flight; though doubtless, were the attention of entomologists directed to 
that subject, others would be found exhibiting the same peculiarity. The 
insect I allude ‘to (Coreus marginatus) is one of the numerous tribe of 
bugs ; when flying, especially when hovering together in a sunny sheltered 
Spot, they emit a hum as loud as that of the hive-bee. 

From the magnitude and strength.of their wings, it might be supposed 
that many lepidopterous insects would not be silent in their flight ; and 
indeed many of the hawk-moths (Sphinx I’.), and some of the larger 
moths (Bombyx F.), are not so; Cossus ligniperda, for instance, is said to 
emulate the booming of beetles by means of its large stiff wings ; whence 
in Germany it is called the humming-bird (Brumm-vogel). But the great 
body of these numerous tribes, even those that fan the air with “ sail-broad 
vans, produce little or no sound by their motion. I must, therefore, leave 
them, as well as the Trichoptera and Neuroptera, which are equally barren 


’ Syst. Nat. 42. 550. 2 Nat. Hist. ii, 254. 
White, Nat. Hist, ii. 256. 4 Rey. ix. 9. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. 521 


of insects of sounding wing, and proceed to an order, the Hymenoptera, 
in which the insects that compose it are, many of them, of more fame for 
this property. 

The indefatigable hive-bee, as she flies from flower to flower, amuses the 
observer with her hum, which, though monotonous, pleases by exciting the 
idea of happy industry, that 20 ‘the toils of labor with a song, When 
she alights upon a flower, and is engaged in collecting its sweets, her hum 
ceases ; but it isresumed again the moment that she leaves it. The wasp 
and hornet also are strenuous hummers; and when they enter our apart- 
ments, their hum often brings terror with it. But the most sonorous flies 
of this order are the larger humble-bees, whose bombination, booming, or 
bombing, may be heard from a considerable distance, gradually increasing 
as the animal approaches you, and when, in its wheeling flight, it rudely 
passes close to your ear, almost stunning you by its sharp, shrill, and 
deafening sound. Many genera, however, of this order fly silently. 

But the noisiest wings belong to insects of the dipterous order, a 
majority of which, probably, give notice of their approach by the sound 
of their trumpets. Most of those, however, that have a slender body,— 
the gnat genus (Culex) excepted,—explore the air in silence. Of this 
description are the Tipularia, the Asilida, the genus Empis, and their 
affinities. ‘The rest are more or less insects of a humming flight; and 
with respect to many of them, their hum is a sound of terror and dismay 
to those who hear it. To man, the trumpet of the gnat or mosquito, and 
to beasts, that of the gad-fly, of various kinds of horse-flies, and of the 
Ethiopian zimb, as I have before related at large, is the signal of intolera- 
ble annoyance. Homer, in his Batrachomyomachia, long ago celebrated 
the first of these as a trumpeter :— 

‘“‘ For their sonorous trumpets far renown’d, 

Of battle the dire charge mosquito’s sound.” 
Mr. Pope, in his translation, with his usual inaccuracy, thinking, no doubt, 
to improve upon his author, has turned the old bard’s gnats into hornets. 
In Guiana these animals are distinguished by a name still more tremendous, 
being called the devil’s trumpeters.!. I have observed that early in the 
spring, before their thirst for blood seizes them, gnats when flying emit no 
sound. At this moment (Feb.-18.) two females are flying about my win- 
dows in perfect silence. 

After this short account of insects that give notice when they are upon 
the wing by the sounds that precede them, I must inquire by what means 
these sounds are produced. Ordinarily, except perhaps in the case of the 
gnat, they seem perfectly independent of the will of the animal; and in 
almost every instance, the sole instruments that cause the noise of flying 
insects are their wings, or some parts near to them, which, by their friction 
against the trunk, occasion a vibration—as the fingers upon the strings of 
a “guitar—yielding a sound more or less acute in proportion to the rdpidity 
of their flight, the action of the air perhaps upon these organs giving it 
some modifications. Whether, in the beetles that fly with noise, the elytra 
contribute more or less to produce it, seems not to have been clearly ascer- 
tained: yet, since they fly with force as well as velocity, the action of the 
air may cause some motion in them, enough to occasion friction. With 


? Stedman’s Surinam, i. 24. 


44* 


522 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


respect to Diptera, Latreille contends that the noi% of flies on the wing 
cannot be the result of friction, because their wings are then expanded ; 
but though to us flies seem to sail through the air without moving these 
organs, yet they are doubtless all the while in motion, though too rapid for 
the eye to perceive it. When the aphidivorous flies are hovering, the ver- 
tical play of their wings, though very rapid, is easily seen; but when they 
fly off it is no longer visible. Repeated experiments have been tried to 
ascertain the cause of sound in this tribe, but it should seem with different 
results. De Geer, whose observations were made upon one of the flies 
just mentioned, appears to have proved that, in the insect he examined, the 
sounds were produced by the friction of the root or base of the wings 
against the sides of the cavity in which they are inserted. ‘To be con- 
vinced of this, he affirms, the observer has nothing to do but to hold each 
wing with the finger and thumb, and stretching them out, taking care not 
to hurt the animal, in opposite directions, thus to prevent their motion,— 
and immediately all sound will cease. For further satisfaction he made 
the following experiment. He first cut off the wings of one of these flies 
very near the base ; but finding that it still continued to buzz as before, he 
thought that the winglets and poisers, which he remarked were in a con- 
stant vibration, might occasion the sound. Upon this, cutting both off, 
he examined the mutilated fly with a microscope, and found that the 
remaining fragments of the wings were in constant motion all the time 
that the buzzing continued ; but that upon pulling them up by the roots 
all sound ceased! Shelver’s experiments, noticed in my last letter, go 
to prove, with respect to the insects that he examined, that the winglets 
are more particularly concerned with the buzzing. Upon cutting off the 
wings of a fly—but he does not state that he pulled them up by the roots 
—he found the sound continued. He next cut off the poisers—the buz- 
zing went on. ‘This experiment was repeated eighteen times with the 
same result. Lastly, when he took off the winglets, either wholly or 
partially, the buzzing ceased. This, however, if correct, can only be a 
cause of this noise in the insects that have winglets. Numbers have them 
not. He next, therefore, cut off the poisers of a crane-fly (T%pula cro- 
cata), and found that it buzzed when it moved the wing. He cut off 
half the latter, yet still the sound continued ; but when he had cut off 
the whole of these organs the sound entirely ceased.” 

Dr. Burmeister, however, was led by his experiments to a different 
conclusion, Finding that the buzz of a large fly (Eristalis tenaz) still 
continued after the winglets, the’ poisers, and even the wings had been 
quite cut off except their very stumps (only in this last case the sound 
was somewhat weaker and higher), he conceived that the spiracles lying 
between the meso-and meta-thorax must be the instruments of the sound, 
which accordingly he found to cease entirely when they were stopped 
with gum, though while the wings were in vibration. Pursuing his 
researches, he extracted one of these spiracles, and opening it carefully, 
found its posterior and inner lip, which is directed towards the commence- 
ment of the trachea, to be expanded into a small flat crescent-shaped 
plate, upon which are nine parallel very delicate horny lamine, the central 
one being the largest, while those on each side became gradually smaller 


1 De Geer, vi. 13. 2 Wiedemann’s Archiv. ii. 210. 217. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. | 523 


and lower; and it is, he is persuaded, in consequence of the air being 
forcibly driven out of the trachea and touching these lamine that they 
are made to vibrate and sound precisely in the same way with the glottis 
of the larynx. Dr. Burmeister (who remarks that Chabrier in his Essaz 
sur le Vol des Insectes, p. 45, &c., has also explained the hum of insects 
as produced by the air streaming from the thorax during flight, and alSo 
speaks of lamine which lie at the aperture of the spiracle), inorder to 
be certain that the lamine in question in the posterior spiracles of the 
thorax are alone concerned in producing sound, also inspected the ante- 
rior ones, but without finding in them any trace of these lamine. He 
explains the weaker and sharper tones produced when the wings all but 
the very roots are cut off as resulting from the weaker vibrations of the 
contracting muscles, and consequent less forcible expulsion of the air 
when the vibratory organs are removed ; and he thinks with Chabrier that 
some air may escape through the open trachea of the wings which are 
cut off. Though he regards these lamine as the cause of humming in 
bees and flies, he does not decide that other causes may not produce the 
buzz of cock-chafers, &c., in the thoracic spiracles of which he could not 
discern them. 

Aristophanes, in his Clouds, deriding Socrates, introduces Cherephon 
as asking that philosopher whether gnats made their buzz with their 
mouth or their tail.2 Upon which Mouffet very gravely observes, 
that the sound of one of these insects approaching is much more acute 
than that of one retiring; from whence he very sapiently concludes, that 
not the tail but the mouth must be their organ of sound.’ But after all, 
the friction of the base of the wings against the thorax seems to be the 
sole cause of the alarming buzz of the gnat as well as that of other Dip- 
tera. ‘The warmer the weather, the greater is their thirst for blood, the 
more forcible their flight, the motion of their wings more rapid, and the 
sound produced by that motion more intense. In the night—but perhaps 
this may arise from the universal stillness that then reigns—their hum 
appears louder than in the day: whence its tones may seem to be modi- 
fied by the will of the animal. 

Sounds, also, are sometimes emitted by insects when they are feeding or 
otherwise employed. ‘The action of the jaws of a large number of cock- 
chafers produces a noise resembling the sawing of timber; that of the locusts 
has been compared to the crackling of a flame of fire driven by the wind ; 
indeed the collision at the same instant of myriads of millions of their 
powerful jaws must be attended by a considerable sound. ‘The timber- 
borers also—the Buprestes ; the stag-horn beetles; and particularly the 
capricorn-beetles—the mandibles of whose larve resemble a pair of mill- 
stones*—most probably do not feed in silence. A little wood-louse 
(Atropos pulsatoria)—which on that account has been confounded with 
the death-watch—is said also, when so engaged, to emit a ticking noise. 
Certain two-winged flies seen in spring, distinguished by a very long 
proboscis (Bombylius), hum all the time that they suck the honey from 
the flowers ; as do also many hawk-moths, particularly that called from 


1 Burmeister, Manual of Ent. 468—470., Pehet 1. Seas 
3 Mouffet, 81. 4 Linn. Trans. v. 225.t. xii. f. 7. b. 


524 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


this circumstance the humming-bird (Macroglossa stellatarum), which, 
while it hovers over them, unfolding its long tongue, pilfers their sweets 
without interrupting its song. The giant cock-roach (Blatta gigantea), 
which abounds in old timber houses in the warmer parts of the world, makes 
a noise when the family are asleep like a pretty smart rapping with the 
knuckles—three or four sometimes appearing to answer each other. On 
this account in the West Indies it is called the Drummer ; and they some- 
times beat such a reveille, that only good sleepers can rest for them.’ As 
the animals of this genus generally come forth in the night for the purpose 
of feeding, this noise is probably connected with that subject. 

Insects also, at least many of the social ones, emit peculiar noises while 
engaged in their various employments. If an ear be applied to a wasps 
or humble-bees nest, ora bee-hive,a hum more or less intense may 
always be perceived. Were I disposed to play upon your credulity, I 
might tell you, with Gcedart, that in every humble-bees’ nest there is a 
trumpeter, who early in the morning, ascending to its summit, vibrates his 
wings, and sounding his trumpet for the space of a quarter of an hour, 
rouses the inhabitants to work! But since Reaumur could never witness 
this, I shall not insist upon your believing it, though the relator declares 
that he had heard it with his ears, and seen it with his eyes, and had 
called many to witness the vibrating and strepent wings of this trum- 
peter humble-bee.*? The blue sand-wasp (Ammophila? cyanea), which 
at all other times is silent, when engaged in building its cells, emits a 
singular but pleasing sound, which may be heard at ten or twelve yards’ © 
distance.° 

Some insects also are remarkable for a peculiar mode of calling, com- 
manding, or giving an alarm. 1 have before mentioned the noise made 
by the neuters or soldiers amongst the white ants, by which they keep 
the laborers, who answer it by a hiss, upon the alert and to their work. 
This noise, which is produced by striking any substance with their man- 
dibles, Smeathman describes as a small vibrating sound, rather shriller and 
quicker than the ticking of a watch. It could be distinguished, he says, 
at the distance of three or four feet, and continued for a minute at a time 
with very short intervals. When any one walks in a solitary grove, where 
the covered ways of these insects abound, they give the alarm by a loud 
hissing, which is heard at every step.A—‘* When house-crickets are out,” 
says Mr. White, “and running about in a room in the night, if surprised 
by a candle, they give two or three shrill notes, as it were for a signal to 
their followers, that they may escape to their crannies and lurking-holes to 
avoid danger.’’® 

Under this head I shall consider a noise before alluded to, which has 
been a cause of alarm and terror to the superstitious in all ages. You 
will perceive that 1 am speaking of the death-watch—so called, because 
it emits a sound resembling the ticking of a watch, supposed to predict the 
death of some one of the family in the house in which it is heard. Thus 
sings the muse of the witty Dean of St. Patrick on this subject: 


1 Drury’s Insects, iii. Preface. ? Lister’s Gadart, 244. Compare Reaum. vi. 30. 

J Bingley, Animal Biogr, iii. Ust ed. 335. Mr. Westwood has also observed the same 
peculiarity in Ammophila hirsuta whilst similarly engaged. 

4 Philos. Trans, 1781, 48. 38. 5 Nat. Hist. ii. 262. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. 525 


Me. 5 tha eh pop isig Te nei A WOOd=Wormt 
That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form : 
With teeth or with claws it will bite or will scratch, 
And chambermaids christen this worm a death-watch : 
Because like a watch it always cries click ; 
Then woe be to those in the house who are sick! 
For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost, 
If the maggot cries click, when it scratches the post ; 
But a kettle of scalding hot water ejected, 
Infallibly cures the timber affected : 
; The omen is broken, the danger is over, 
The maggot will die, and the sick will recover.” 


To add to the effect of this noise, it is said to be made only when there 
is a profound silence in an apartment, and every one is still. 

Authors were formerly not agreed concerning the insect from which 
this sound of terror proceeded, some attributing it to a kind of wood- 
louse, as I lately observed, and others to a spider; but it is a received 
opinion now, adopted upon satisfactory evidence, that it is produced by 
some little beetles belonging to the timber-boring genus Anobium. Swam- 
merdam observes, that a small beetle, which he had in his collection, 
having firmly fixed its fore legs, and put its inflexed head between them, 
makes a continual noise in old pieces of wood, walls, and ceilings, which 
is sometimes so loud, that upon hearing it, people have fancied that bob- 
goblins, ghosts, or fairies were wandering around them.’ Evidently this 
was one of the death-watches. Liatreille observed Anobium striatum pro- 
duce the sound in question by a stroke of its mandibles upon the wood, 
which was answered by a similar noise from within it. But the species 
whose proceedings have been most noticed by British observers is A. 
tessellatum. When spring is far advanced, these insects are said to com- 
mence.their ticking, which is only a call to each other, to which if no 
answer be returned, the animal repeats it in another place. It is thus pro- 
duced. Raising itself upon its hind legs, with the body somewhat in- 
clined, it beats its head with great force and agility upon the plane of 
position; and its strokes are so powerful as to make a considerable 
impression if they fall upon any substance softer than wood. The general 
number of distinct strokes in succession is from seven to nine or eleven. 
They follow each other quickly, and are repeated at uncertain intervals, 
In old houses, where these insects abound, they may be heard in warm 
weather during the whole day. The noise exactly resembles that pro- 
duced by tapping moderately with the nail upon the table; and when 
familiarized, the insect will answer very readily the tap of the nail.? 

The queen bee has long been celebrated for a peculiar sound, produc- 
ing the most extraordinary effects upon her subjects. Sometimes, just 
before bees swarm,—instead of the great hum usually heard, and even in 
the night,—if the ear be placed close to the mouth of the hive, a sharp 
clear sound may be distinguished, which appears to be produced by the 
vibration of the wings of a single bee. ‘This, it has been pretended, is 
the harangue of the new queen to her subjects, to inspire them with 
courage to achieve the foundation of a new empire. But Butler gives to 
it a different interpretation. He asserts, that the candidate for the new 


1 Bibl. Nat. Ed. Hill, i. 125. 
aut hie Mise. iii. 104. Phil. Trans. xxxiii. 159. Compare Dameril, Traité Elément: 
ii. 91. 2. . 


526 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


throne is then with earnest entreaties, lamentations,#and groans, supplica- 
ting the queen-mother of the hive to grant her permission to lead the 
intended colony ;—that this is continued, before she can obtain her con- 
sent, for two days: when the old queen relenting gives her fiat in a fuller 
and stronger tone. ‘That should the former presume to imitate the tones 
of the sovereign, this being the signal of revolt, she would be executed 
on the spot, with all whom she had seduced from their loyalty.!—But it 
is time to leave fables: I shall, therefore, next relate to you what really 
takes place. You have heard how the bees detain their young queens till 
they are fit to lead a swarm.—lI then mentioned the attitude and sound 
that strike the former motionless. When she emits this authoritative sound, 
reclining her thorax against a comb, the queen stands with her wings 
crossed upon her back, which, without being uncrossed or further expanded, 
are kept in constant vibration. ‘The tone thus produced is a very distinct 
kind of clicking, composed of many notes in the same key, which follow 
each other rapidly. ‘This sound the queens emit before they are permitted 
to leave their cells ; but it does not then seem to affect the bees. But 
when once they are liberated from confinement and assume the above atti- 
tude, its effects upon them are very remarkable. As soon as the sound 
was heard, Huber tells us, bees that had been employed in plucking, 
biting, and chasing the queen about, hung down their heads and remained 
altogether motionless ; and whenever she liad recourse to this attitude and 
sound, they operated upon them in the same manner. The writer just 
mentioned observed differences both with regard to the succession and 
intensity of the notes and tones of this royal song; and, as he justly 
remarks, there may be still finer shades which, escaping our organs, may 
be distinctly perceived by the bees.? He seems, however, to doubt by 
what means this sound is produced. Reasoning analogically, the motion 
of the wings should occasion it. We have seen that they are in constant 
motion when it is uttered. Probably the intensity of the tones and their 
succession are regulated by the intensity of the vibrations of the wings. 
Reaumur remarks, that the different tones of the bees, whether more or 
less grave or acute, are produced by the strokes, more or less rapid, of 
their wings against the air; and that, perhaps, their different angles of 
inclination may vary the sound. The friction of their bases likewise 
against the sides of the cavity in which they are inserted, as in the case 
of the fly lately mentioned, or against the base-covers (tegule), may pro- 
duce or modulate their sounds, a bee whose wings are eradicated being 
perfectly mute.’ This last assertion, however, is contradicted by John 
Hunter, who affirms that bees produce a noise independent of their wings, 
emitting a shrill and peevish sound though they are cut off, and the legs held 
fast.4 Yet it does not appear from his experiment that the wings were 
eradicated. And if they were only cut off, the friction of their base 
might cause the sound. I have before noticed the remarkable fact, that 
the queens educated according to M. Schirach’s method are absolutely 
mute; on which account the bees keep no guard around their cells, nor 
retain them an instant in them after their transformation.® 


' Reaum. v. 615. Butler’s Female Monarchy, c. v. § 4. 
2 Huber, i. 260. ii, 292, 
3 Reaum. v. 617. 4 Philos. Trans. 1792. 5 Huber, i. 292. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. 527 


The passions, also, which urge us to various exclamations, elicit from 
insects occasionally certain sounds. Fear, anger, sorrow, joy, or love and 
desire, they express in particular instances by particular noises. I shall 
begin with those which they emit when under any alarm. One larva 
only is recorded as uttering a cry of alarm, and it produces a perfect insect 
remarkable for the same faculty: I allude to Acherontia Atropos. Its 
caterpillar, if disturbed at all, draws back rapidly, making at the same 
time a rather loud noise, which has been compared to the crack of an 
electric spark.’ You would scarcely think that any quiescent pupe could 
show their fears by a sound,—yet in one instance this appears to be the 
ease. De Geer having made a small incision in the cocoon of a moth, 
which included that of its parasite Ichneumon (I. cantator, De G.), the 
insect concealed within the latter uttered a little cry, similar to the chirp- 
ing of a small grasshopper, continuing it for a long time together. The 
sound was produced by the friction of its body against the elastic sub- 
stance of its own cocoon, and was easily imitated by rubbing a knife 
against its surface.? 

But to come to perfect insects. Many beetles when taken show their 
alarm by the emission of a shrill, sibilant, or creaking sound—which some 
compare to the chirping of young birds—produced by rubbing their elytra 
with the extremity of their abdomen. This is. the case with the dung- 
chafers (Geotrupes vernalis, stercorarius, and Copris lunaris) ; with the 
carrion-chafer (Trox sabulosus) ; and others of the lamellicorn beetles. 
The burying-beetle (Necrophorus Vespillo), Crioceris melanopa and 
merdigera, and Hygrobia Hermanni, and many other Coleoptera, produce 
a similar noise by the same means. When this noise is made, the move- 
ment of the abdomen may be perceived; and if a pin is introduced under 
the elytra it ceases. Long after many of these insects are dead the noise 
may be caused by pressure. Résel found this with respect to the Scara- 
beide*, and I have repeated the experiment with success upon Necropho- 
rus Vespillo. The capricorn tribes (Prionus, Lamia, Cerambyx, &c.) 
emit under alarm an acute or creaking sound—which Lister calls querulous, 
and Dumeril compares to the braying of an ass'—by the friction of the 
thorax, which they alternately elevate and depress, against the neck, and 
sometimes against the base of the elytra.° On account of this, Prionus, 
coriarius, is called the fiddler in Germany.’ 'Two other coleopterous 
genera, Cychrus and Clytus, make their cry of Noli me tangere by rub- 
bing their thorax against the base of the elytra. Pimelia, another beetle, 
does the same by the friction of its legs against each other.’? And, doubt- 
less, many more Coleoptera, if observed, would be found to express their 
fears by similar means. 

In the other orders the examples of cries of terror are much less nume- 
rous. A bug (Cimex subapterus De G.) when taken emits a sharp sound, 
probably with its rostrum, by moving its head up and down.’ Ray makes 
a similar remark with respect to another bug (Reduvius personatus), the 


* Fuessl. Archiv. 8.10. Mr. Raddon assures me that on one occasion taking up the 
caterpillar of another moth, Gastropacha quercifolia by the hairs, it uttered a distinct squeak. 


2 De Geer. vii. 594. 3 Roel, II. 208. 
4 Ray, Hist. Ins. 384. Dumeril, Trait. Elément. ii. 100. n. 17. 
5 De Geer, v. 58. 69. Résel, II. iii. 5. § Rosel, ibid. 


7 Latr. Hist. Nat, x. 264. 8 De Geer, iii. 289. 


528 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


cry of which he compares to the chirping of a @rasshopper.' Mutilla 
europea, a hymenopterous insect, makes a sibilant chirping, as I once 
observed at Southwold, where it abounds ; but how produced I cannot say. 
The praying mantis (M. religiosa), as we learn from M. Goureau, when 
alarmed and having put itself in an attitude of defence, rubs the sides of 
the abdomen against the interior borders of the wings and elytra, so as to 
produce a noise like that of parchment rubbed together.* The most 
remarkable noise, however, proceeding from insects under alarm, is that 
emitted by the death’s-head hawk-moth, and for which it has long been _ 
celebrated. The Lepidoptera, though some of them, as we have seen, 
produce a sound when they fly, at other times are usually mute insects : 
but this alarmist—for so it may be called, from the terrors which it has 
occasioned to the superstitious—when it walks and more particularly when 
it is confined, or taken into the hand, sends forth a strong and sharp cry, 
resembling, some say, that of a mouse, but more plaintive, and even 
lamentable, which it continues as long as it is held. This ery does not 
appear to be produced by the wings; for when they, as well as the thorax 
and abdomen are held down, it becomes still louder. Schroeter says that 
_ the animal, when it utters itscry, rubs its tongue against its head*; and Résel, 
that it produces it by the friction of the thorax and abdomen.* But Reau- 
mur believed, after the most attentive examination, that the cry came 
from the mouth, or rather from the tongue; and he thought that it was 
produced by the friction of the palpi against that organ. When, by means 
of a pin, he unfolded the spiral tongue, the cry ceased ; but as soon as it 
was rolled up again between the palpi it was renewed. He next pre- 
vented the palpi from touching it, and the sound also ceased ; and upon 
removing only one of them, though it continued, it became much more 
feeble.® Huber, however denies that it is produced by the friction of the 
tongue and palpi®: as does M. Passerini, who conceives that it is owing 
to the alternate inspiration and expiration of air from the central canal of 
the proboscis into a peculiar cavity in the head destined for giving it the 
required resonance. But on the other hand MM. Duponchel, Aubé, 
Boisduval, Pierret, and Rambur, members of the Entomological Society 
of France, who expressly instituted a series of experiments in order to 
ascertain the actual cause of the noise, came to the conclusion that it is 
not owing to any of those hitherto assigned, and yet remains to be discov- 
ered, and that the noise itself has little of the plaintive cry attributed to 
it, but has the greatest analogy with that made by most of the capricorn 
beetles (Prionus, Lamia, &c.), as above described.? If the observation 
of a friend of Mr. Raddon, that this noise is sometimes made by the moth 
just before issuing from the pupa’, be correct, it would go far to prove 
that it is simply owing, as Résel thought, to the same cause as that of the 
capricorn beetles, since the confined posture of the insect in the pupa 
case, and the very limited quantity of air there inclosed, seem to forbid 
the supposition that this last has any share in producing it. 
I must next say a few words upon the angry chidings of our little 
creatures ; for their anger sometimes vents itself in sounds. I have often 


\ Hist. Ins. 56, ® Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, x. bull. xviii. 

3 Naturforscher Stk, xxi. 77. “°TH. 16; 5 Reaum. ii. 290. 

8 Nouv. Obs. ii. 300., note *. 7 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, viii. 59. and ix. 125. 
8 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. 1xxvi. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. 529 


been amused with hearing the indignant tones of a humble-bee while 
lying upon its back. When I held my finger to it, it kicked and scolded 
with all its might. Hive-bees when irritated emit a shrill and peevish 
sound, continuing even when they are held under water, which John 
Hunter says vibrates at the point of contact with the air-holes at the root 
of their wings. This sound is particularly sharp and angry when they 
fly at an intruder. The same sounds, or very similar ones, tell us when 
a wasp is offended, and we may expect to be stung ;—but this passion of 
anger in insects is so nearly connected with their fear that I need not 
enlarge further upon it. 

Concerning their shouts of joy and cries of sorrow I have little to record : 
that pleasure or pain makes a difference in the tones of vocal insects is 
not improbable ; but our auditory organs are not fine enough to catch all 
their different modulations. When Schirach had once smoked a hive to 
oblige the bees to retire to the top of it, the queen with some of the rest 
flew away. Upon this, those that remained in the hive sent forth a most 
plaintive sound, as if they were all deploring their loss ; when their sovereign 
was restored to them, these lugubrious sounds were succeeded by an agreea- 
ble humming, which announced their joy at the event.” Huber relates, 
that once when all the worker-brood was removed from a hive, and only 
male brood left, the bees appeared in a state of extreme despondency. 
Assembled in clusters upon the combs, they lost all their activity. The 
queen dropped her eggs at random ; and instead of the usual active hum, 
a dead silence reigned in the hive.® 

But love is the soul of song with those that may be esteemed the most 
musical insects, the grasshopper tribes (Gryllina and Locustina), and the 
long celebrated Cicada. You would suppose, perhaps, that the ladies 
would bear their share in these amatory strains. But here you would be 
mistaken—female insects are too intent upon their business, too coy and 
reserved to tell their love even to the winds.—The males alone 


‘“‘ Formosam resonare docent Amaryllida sylvas.” 


With respect to the Cicada, this was observed by Aristotle ; and Pliny, 
as usual, has retailed it after him.t The observation also holds good with 
respect to the Gryllina, &c., and other insects, probably, whose love is 
musical. Olivier, however, has noticed an exception to this doctrine; 
for he relates, that in a species of beetle (Moluris striata), the female has 
a round granulated spot in the middle of the second segment of the abdo- 
men, by striking which against any hard substance, she produces a rather 
loud sound, and that the male, obedient to this call, soon attends her, and 
they pair.? Both sexes, also, in the genus Ephippiger, separated by La- 
treille from Acrida, and characterized as being without wings and with 
very short wing-covers, are musical (?).® 

As I have nothing to communicate to you with respect to the love-songs 


1 In Philos. Trans. 1792. This fact strongly confirms Dr. Burmeister’s experiments 
before related, showing that the humming of bees, as of flies, is caused not by the wings, 
but by the action of the air on the lamine of the thoracic spiracles as there described. 

2 Schirach, 73. 3 i. 226 

4 Aristot. Hist. Anim. 1. v.¢. 30. Plin. Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 26. 

5 Oliv. Entomol. i. Pref. ix. 

® Goureau, Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, vi. 31. and translation in Entom. Mag. v. 98. 


45 


530 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


of other insects, my further observations will be €onfined to the tribes 
lately mentioned, the Gryllina, &c., and the Cicade. 

No sound is to me more agreeable than the chirping of most of the 
Gryllina, Locustina, &c.; it gives life to solitude, and always conveys to 
my mind the idea of a perfectly happy being. As these creatures are 
now very properly divided into several genera, I shall say a few words 
upon the song of such as are known to be vocal, separately. 

The remarkable genus Pnumora—whose pellucid abdomen is blown 
up like a bladder, on which account they are called Blaazops by the 
Dutch colonists at the Cape—in the evening, for they are silent in the 
day,—make a tremulous and tolerably loud noise, which is sometimes 
heard on every side. The species of this genus have a claim to the 
name of Fiddlers since their sound is produced by passing the hind-legs, 
which are furnished with a series of smooth elevated ridges, and may be 
called the fiddle-sticks, over a number of short transverse elevated ridges, 
of a similar though slightly different structure, on the abdomen, which may 
be called the strings.” 

The cricket tribe are a very noisy race, and their chirping is caused by 
the friction of the cases of their elytra against each other. For this pur- 
pose there is something peculiar in their structure, which I shall describe 
to you. The elytra of both sexes are divided longitudinally into two 
portions ; a vertical or lateral one, which covers the sides; and a hori- 
zontal or dorsal one, which covers the back. In the female both these 
portions resemble each other in their nervures ; which running obliquely 
in two directions, by théir intersection, form numerous small lozenge- 
shaped or rhomboidal meshes or areolets. ‘The elytra also of these have 
no elevation at their base. In the males the vertical portion does not 
materially differ from that of the females; but in the horizontal the base 
of each elytrum is elevated so as to form a cavity underneath. The ner- 
vures also, which are stronger and more prominent, run here and there 
very irregularly with various inflections, describing curves, spirals, and 
other figures difficult and tedious to describe, and producing a variety of 
areolets of different size and shape, but generally larger than those of the 
female: particularly towards the extremity of the elytrum you may 
observe a space nearly circular, surrounded by one nervure, and divided 
into two areolets by another.* The friction of the nervures of the upper 
or convex surface of the base of the left hand elytrum—which is the 
undermost—against those of the lower or concave surface of the base of 
the right hand—which is the uppermost one ; will communicate vibra- 
tions to the areas of membrane, more or less intense in proportion to the 
rapidity of the friction, and thus produce the sound for which these 
creatures are noted ; which, however, according to M. Goureau, in his 
elaborate essay on the stridulation of insects, is chiefly owing to the cir- 
cumstance of one of the strong nervures called by him the bow (larchet) 
being striated or cut transversely like a file, whence it has a much more 
powerful action on another collection of nervures which he calls the treble- 
string (la chanferelle).4 

The merry inhabitant of our dwellings, the house-cricket (@ryllus 


' Sparrman, Voy. i. 312. * Charpentier in Silbermann’s Revue Entom. iii. 314. 
3 Compare De Geer, iii. 512. * Ann. Soc, Ent. de France, and Entom. Mag. v. 94. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. 531 


domesticus), though it is often heard by day, is most noisy in the night. 
As soon as it grows dusk, its shrill note increases till it becomes quite an 
annoyance, and interrupts conversation. When the male sings, he elevates 
the elytra so as to form an acute angle with the body, and then rubs them 
against each other by a horizontal and very brisk motion.! The learned 
Scaliger is said to have been particularly delighted with the chirping of 
these animals, and was accustomed to keep them in a box for his amuse- 
ment. We are told that they have been sold in Africa at a high price, 
and employed to procure sleep.” If they could be used to supply the 
place of laudanum, and lull. the restlessness of busy thought in this coun- 
try, the exchange would be beneficial. Like many other noisy persons, 
crickets like to hear nobody louder than themselves. Ledelius relates 
that a woman, who had tried in vain every method she could think of to 
banish them from her house, at last got rid of them by the noise made 
by drums and trumpets, which she had procured to entertain her guests 
ata wedding. They instantly forsook the house, and she heard of them 
no more.® 

The field-cricket (Gryllus campestris) makes a shrilling noise—still 
more sonorous than that of the house-cricket—which may be heard at a 
great distance. Mouffet tells us, that their sound may be imitated by rub- 
bing their elytra, after they are taken off, against each other.* “Sounds,” 
says Mr. White, “do not always give us pleasure according to their 
sweetness and melody; nor do harsh sounds always displease.—T hus the 
shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvelously 
delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of 
every thing that is rural, verdurous, and joyous.” One of these crickets 
when confined in a paper cage and set in the sun, and supplied with plants 
moistened with water—for if they are not wetted it will die—will feed, 
and thrive, and become so merry and loud, as to be irksome in the same 
room where a person is sitting.® 

Having never seen a female of that extraordinary animal the mole- 
cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris), 1 cannot say what difference obtains in 
the reticulation of the elytra of the two sexes. ‘The male varies in this 
respect from the other male crickets, for they have no circular area, nor 
do the nervures run so irregularly; the areolets, however, towards their 
base are large, with very tense membrane. The base itself also is scarcely 
at all elevated. Circumstances these, which demonstrate the propriety of 
considering them distinct from the other crickets. ‘This creature is not, 
however, mute. Where they abound they may be heard about the middle 
of April singing their love-ditty in a low, dull, jarring, uninterrupted note, 
not unlike that of the goat-sucker (Caprimulgus europeus), but more 
inward. I remember once tracing one by its shrilling to the very hole, 
under stone in the bank of my canal, in which it was concealed. We 
learn from Mr. Newport, who, in his very valuable treatise on insects in 


1 De Geer, iii. 517. See also White, Nat. Hist. ii. 76.;—and Ray, Hist. Ins 63. 

2 Mouffet, 136. 3 Goldsmith’s Animat. Nat. vi. 28. 4 Ins. Theatr. 134. 

5 Nat. Hist.ii.73. Yet it would appear that when wholly removed from the scent of their 
mother-earth they are silent, for it is stated by Southey that on the ship of Cabeza de Vaca 
approaching the coast of Brazil, the proximity of land was inferred, and as the result proved, 
truly, by a ground cricket which a soldier had brought from Cadiz then beginning again to 
sing. (Hist. of Brazil.) 

§ Nat. Hist. ii. 81. 


532 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


the Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology, has $0 admirably illustrated 
their structure, both internal and external, that this low jarring sound is 
owing to the shortness of the nervures, and the much greater number of 
those on the under side of the wing-covers being scored with the same 
notches as in a file (p. 928.) ; pointed out in the crickets by M. Goureau, 
who also saw them in the mole-cricket, but seems to have overlooked their 
extending to so many of the nervures as Mr. Newport has observed to be 
furnished with them. 

Another tribe of grasshoppers (Acrida, Pterophylla, &c.1)—the females 
of which are distinguished by their long ensiform ovipositor—like the 
crickets, make their noise by the friction of the base of their elytra. And 
the chirping they thus produce is long, and seldom interrupted, which 
distinguishes it from that of the common grasshoppers (Locusta). What 
is remarkable, the grasshopper lark (Sylvia locustella), which preys upon 
them, makes a similar noise. Professor Lichtenstein, in the Linnean 
Transactions, has called the attention of naturalists to the eye-like area 
in the right elytrum of the males of this genus®; but he seems not to 
have been aware that De Geer had noticed it before him as a sexual char- 
acter ; who also, with good reason, supposes it to assist these animals in 
the sounds they produce. Speaking of Acrida veridissima—common with 
us—he says, “In our male grasshoppers, in that part of the right elytrum 
which is folded horizontally over the trunk, there is a round plate made of 
very fine transparent membrane, resembling a little mirror or piece of tale, 
of the tension of a drum. This membrane is surrounded by a strong and 
prominent nervure, and is concealed under the fold of the left elytrum, 
which has also several prominent nervures answering to the margin of the 
membrane or ocellus. ‘There is,” he further remarks, “every reason to 
believe that the brisk movement with which the grasshopper rubs these 
nervures against each other produces a vibration in the membrane aug- 
menting the sound. ‘The males in question sig continually in the hedges 
and trees during the months of July and August, especially towards sunset 
and part of the night. When any one approaches, they immediately 
cease their song.’’* In these insects, as in the crickets, M. Goureau has 
detected in the strong horny ridge immediately behind the mirror or tym- 
panum, near the base of the upper surface of the left elytrum, the same 
transverse notches as in Acheta and Gryllotalpa, while on the under sur- 
face of the right elytrum a similar but less strongly notched file-like ridge 
is found; and it is obviously by the rubbing of these rasps against the 
projecting nervures of the borders of the wings, that the sounds resulting 
from the brisk friction of the elytra proceed. Dr. Burmeister conceives 
that they are chiefly caused by the forcible expiration of air from the tho- 
racic trachew and spiracles, first driven against the inflected external mar- 
gin of the wing, and subsequently against the tympanum, which is thus 
caused to vibrate and resound; but Mr. Newport has pointed out that 
this cannot be the cause, because in Acrida brachelytra the elytra are so 
exceedingly short and narrow that they do not cover, nor are near, any 
part of the spiracles, so that the air in passing from these orifices cannot 
possibly be driven against the tympanum; which, however, being accom- 
panied by notched nervures, as in A. viridissima, though differently 


1 See Kirby in Zool. Journ. p. iv. 429. Linn. Trans.iv. 51. ® De Geer, iii. 429. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. .- 533 


arranged, produces similar sounds. A still farther proof that these notched 
nervures or files are the main agents in producing the sounds, is afforded 
by the facts that their notches are more distinct in newly disclosed speci- 
mens, especially of Acrida viridissima, than in older individuals, in which 
they have been partially obliterated by use; and that the sounds, as M. 
Goureau has remarked, may be readily produced in the dead insect by 
gently rubbing the bases of the elytra together, which could not happen 
if the rushing of the air from the spiracles had any effect in producing 
them." 

The last description of singers that I shall notice amongst the Locustina, 
and which includes the migratory locust, are those that are more com- 
monly denominated grasshoppers. ‘To this genus belong the little chirpers 
that we hear in every sunny bank, and which make vocal every heath. 
They begin their song—which is a short chirp regularly interrupted, in 
which it differs from that of the Acride—long before sunrise. In the 
heat of the day it is intermitted, and resumed in the evening. ‘This sound 
is thus produced :—Applying its posterior shank to the thigh, the animal 
rubs it briskly against the elytrum?, doing this alternately with the right 
and left legs, which causes the regular breaks in the sound. But this is 
not their whole apparatus of song—since, like the Tettigonie, they have 
also a tympanum or drum. De Geer, who examined the insects he 
describes with the eye of an anatomist, seems to be the only entomologist 
that has noticed this organ. ‘On each side of the first segment of the 
abdomen,” says he, “ immediately above the origin of the posterior thighs, 
there is a considerable and deep aperture of rather an oval form, which is 
partly closed by an irregular flat plate or operculum of a hard substance, 
but covered by a wrinkled flexible membrane. 'The opening left by this 
operculum is semilunar, and at the bottom of the cavity is a white pellicle 
of considerable tension, and shining like a little mirror. On that side of 
the aperture which is towards the head there is a little oval hole, into 
which the point of a pin may be introduced without resistance. When 
the pellicle is removed, a large cavity appears. In my opinion this 
aperture, cavity, and above all the membrane in tension, contribute much 
to produce and augment the sound emitted by the grasshopper.’’? This 
description, which was taken from the migratory locust (L. migratoria), 
answers tolerably well to the tympanum of our common grasshoppers ; 
only in them the aperture seems to be rather semicircular, and the wrinkled 
plate—which has no marginal hairs—is clearly a continuation of the sub- 
stance of the segment. This apparatus so mucli resembles the drum of 
the Cicade, that there can be little doubt as to its use. The vibrations 
caused by the friction of the thighs and elytra striking upon this drum are 
reverberated by it, and so intenseness is given to the sound.* In Spain, 
we are told that people of fashion keep these animals—called there Grillo 
—in cages, which they name Grilleria, for the sake of their song.° 

I shall conclude this diatribe upon the noises of insects with a tribe 
that have long been celebrated for their musical powers: I mean the Cica- 


? Burmeister, Manual of Entom. 470. Goureau, ubi supra. Newport, ubi supra, 929. 
2 De Geer, iii. 470. 3 Ibid. 471. t. xxiii. f. 2, 3. 
4 Goureau (op. cit.) and Maller (Burmeister, Manual, 572.) regard this drum as an audi- 
tory organ, but probably without sufficient grounds. 
5 Osbeck’s Voy. i. 71. 
45* 


534 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


diada, including the genera Fulgora, Cicada, Téttix, and Tettigonia.’ 
The Fulgore appear to be night singers, while the Cicade sing usually in 
the day. The great lantern-fly (Fulgora laternaria), from its noise in 
the evening—nearly resembling the sound of a cymbal, or razor-grinder 
when at work—is called Scare-sleep by the Dutch in Guiana. It begins 
recularly at sunset.” Perhaps an insect mentioned by Ligon as making a 
great noise in the night, in Barbadoes, may belong to this tribe. “ ‘There 
is a kind of animal in the woods,” says he, ‘that I never saw, which lie 
all day in holes and hollow trees, and as soon as the sun is down begin 
their tunes, which are neither singing nor crying, but the shrillest voices I 
ever heard: nothing can be so nearly resembled to it as the mouths of a 
pack of small beagles at a distance ; and so lively and chirping the noise 
is as nothing can be more delightful to the ears, if there were not too 
much of it ; for the music has no intermission till morning, and then all is 
husht.”? = 

The species of the other genus, Cicada, called by the ancient Greeks— 
by whom they were often kept in cages for the sake of their song— 
Tettix, seem to have been the favorites of every Grecian bard from Homer 
and Hesiod to Anacreon and Theocritus. Supposed to be perfectly 
harmless, and to live only upon the dew, they were addressed by the 
most endearing epithets, and were regarded as all but divine. One bard 
entreats the shepherds to spare the innoxious Tettix, that nightingale of 
the Nymphs, and to make those mischievous birds the thrush and black- 
bird their prey. Sweet prophet of the summer, says Anacreon, addres- 
sing this insect, the Muses love thee, Phoebus himself loves thee, and has 
given thee a shrill song; old age does not wear thee out; thou art wise, 
earth-born, musical, impassive, without blood ; thou art almost like a god.* 
So attached were the Athenians to these insects, that they were accus- 
tomed to fasten golden images of them in their hair, implying at the same 
time a boast that they themselves, as well as the Cicade, were Terre 
filii. They were regarded indeed by all as the happiest as well as the 
most innocent of animals—not, we will suppose, for the reason given by 
the saucy Rhodian Xenarchus, when he says, 

“Happy the Cicadas’ lives, 
Since they all have voiceless wives.” 

If the Grecian Tettix or Cicada had been distinguished by a harsh 
and deafening note, like those of some other countries, it would hardly 
have been an object of such affection. That it was not, is clearly proved 
by the connection which was supposed to exist between it and music. 
Thus the sound of this insect and of the harp were called by one and 
the same name.® A Cicada sitting upon a harp was a usual emblem of 
the science of music, which was thus accounted for:—When two rival 
musicians, Hunomus and Ariston, were contending upon that instrument, 
a Cicada flying to the former and sitting upon his harp supplied the 
place of a broken string, and so secured to him the victory. To excel 


1 Zovlog. Journ. No. iv. 429. 

2 Stedman’s Surinam, ii. 37. Dr. Hancock, however (Proceed. Zool. Soc. June 24, 1834), 
states that the razor-grinder, or aria-aria of the natives, is a species of Cicada ( C. clarisona), 
and that the Fulgorz rarely sing. 

3 Hist. of Barbadoes, 65, 4 Epigramm. Delect. 45, 234. © Gr. repertona. 

® Mouffet, Theatr. 130. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. 535 


this animal in singing seems to have been the highest commendation of 
a singer; and even the eloquence of Plato was not thought to suffer by a 
comparison with it.1. At Surinam the noise of the Cicada Tibicen is still 
supposed so much to resemble the sound of a harp or lyre, that they are 
called there harpers (Lierman).? Whether the Grecian Cicade maintain 
at present their ancient character for music, travelers do not tell us. 

Those of other countries, however, have been held in less estimation 
for their powers of song; or rather have been execrated for the deafening 
din that they produce. Virgil accuses those of Italy of bursting the very 
shrubs with their noise®; and Sir J. E. Smith observes that this species, 
which is very common, makes a most disagreeable dull chirping.* Ano- 
ther, Cicada septendecim—which fortunately, as its name imports, appears 
only once in seventeen years—makes such a continual din from morning 
to evening that people cannot hear each other speak. ‘They appear in 
Pennsylvania in incredible numbers in the middle of May.® ‘In the 
hotter months of summer,” says Dr. Shaw, “especially from midday 
to the middle of the afternoon, the Cicada, term, or grasshopper, as we 
falsely translate it, is perpetually stunning our ears with its most exces- 
sively shrill and ungrateful noise. It is in this respect the most trouble- 
some and impertinent of, insects, perching upon a twig and squalling some- 
times two or three hours without ceasing; thereby too often disturbing 
the studies, or short repose that is frequently indulged, in these hot 
climates, at those hours. The term& of the Greeks must have had a quite 
different voice, more soft, surely, and melodious ; otherwise the fine ora- 
tors of Homer, who are compared to it, can be looked upon no better 
than loud loquacious scolds.”’® An insect of this tribe, and I am told a 
very noisy one, has been found by Mr. Daniel Bydder, before mentioned 
(Cicada Anglica Curtis’) in the New Forest, Hampshire. Previously 
to this it was not thought that any of these insect musicians were natives 
of the British Isles. Captain Hancock informs me that the Brazilian 
Cicadz sing so loud as to be heard at the distance of a mile. This is as 
if a man of ordinary stature, supposing his powers of voice increased in 
the ratio of his size, could be heard all over the world. So that Stentor 
himself becomes a mute when compared with these insects. 

You feel very curious, doubtless, to know by what means these little 
animals are enabled to emit such prodigious sounds. I have lately men- 
tioned to you the drum of certain grasshoppers: this, however, appears to 
be an organ of a very simple structure; but since it is essential to the 
economy of the Cicade that their males should so much exceed all other 
insects in the loudness of their tones, they are furnished with a much more 
complex, and indeed most wonderful, apparatus, which I shall now describe. 
If you look at the under side of the body of a male, the first thing that will 
strike you is a pairof large plates of an irregular form—in some semi-oval, 
in others triangular, in others again a segment of a circle of greater or less 
diameter—covering the anterior part of the belly, and fixed to the trunk 
between the abdomen and the hind legs.2 These are the drum-covers or 
opercula, from beneath which the sound issues. At the base of the poste- 


I Eksverres Th\arwy, ac rerregty ecodados. 2 Merian, Surinam. 49. 
3 Et cantu querule rumpent arbusta cicade. Georg. iii, 328. 
4 Smith’s Tour, iii. 95. § Collinson in Philos. Trans. 1763. Stoll, Cigales, 26, 


§ Travels, 2d ed. 186. 7 Brit. Ent. t. 114. 8 Reaum. v. t. xvi. f. 5. uu. 


536 NOISES OF INSECTS. 


rior legs, just above each operculum, there is a small pointed triangular 
process (pessellum)', the object of which, as Reaumur supposes, is to prevent 
them from being too much elevated. When an operculum is removed, 
beneath it you will find on the exterior side a hollow cavity, with a mouth 
somewhat linear, which seems to open into the interior of the abdomen?: 
next to this, on the inner side, is another large cavity of an irregular shape, 
the bottom of which is divided into three portions ; of these the posterior 
is lined obliquely with a beautiful membrane, which is very tense—in some 
species semi-opaque, and in others transparent—and reflects all the colors 
of the rainbow. This mirror is not the real organ of sound, but is supposed 
to modulate it.2 The middle portion is occupied by a plate of a horny 
substance, placed horizontally, and forming the bottom of the cavity. On 
its inner side this plate terminates in a carina or elevated ridge, common 
to both drums.4 Between the plate and the after-breast (postpectus) 
another membrane, folded transversely, fills an oblique, oblong, or semilunar 
cavity.© In some species I have seen this membrane in tension ; probably 
the insect can stretch or relax it at its pleasure. But even all this appa- 
ratus is insufficient to produce the sound of these animals; one still more 
important and curious yet remains to be described. This organ can only 
be discovered by dissection. A portion of the first and second segments 
being removed from that side of the back of the abdomen which answers 
to the drums, two bundles of muscles meeting each other in an acute angle, 
attached to a place opposite to the point of the mucro of the first ventral seg- 
ment of the abdomen, will appear. In Reaumur’s specimens these bundles 
of muscles seem to have been cylindrical ; but in one I dissected (Cicada 
Capensis) they were tubiform, the end to which the true drum is attached 
being dilated.? These bundles consist of a prodigious number of muscular 
fibres applied to each other, but easily separable. Whilst Reaumur was 
examining one of these, pulling it from its place with a pin, he let it go 
again, and immediately, though the animal had been long dead, the usual 
sound was emitted. On each side of the drum-cavities, when the opercula 
are removed, another cavity of a lunulate shape, opening into the interior 
of the abdomen, is observable.* In this is the true drum, the principal 
organ of sound, and its aperture is to the Cicada what our larynx is tous. 
If these creatures are unable themselves to modulate their sounds, here are 
parts enough to do it for them: for the mirrors, the membranes, and the 
central portions, with their cavities, all assist in it. In the cavity last 
described, if you remove the lateral part of the first dorsal segment of the 
abdomen, you will discover a semi-opaque and nearly semi-circular concavo- 
convex membrane with transverse folds: this is the drum.? Each bundle 
of muscles, before mentioned, is terminated by a tendinous plate nearly 
circular, from which issue several little tendons that, forming a thread, pass 
through an aperture in the horny piece that supports the drum, and are 
attached to its under or concave surface. Thus the bundle of muscles being 
alternately and briskly relaxed and contracted, will by its play draw in and 
let out the drum: so that its convex surface being thus rendered concave 
when pulled in, when Jet out a sound will be produced by the effort to 


1 Reaum. whi supra, t. xvi. f. LL. b. 2 Reaum. ibid. f. 3. 77. 
3 Ibid. ubi supra, f. 3. m m. ‘ Ibid. q. g. ¢. 5 Reaum. t. xvi. f. 3. 2. 2. 
$ Ibid, ubi supr. f.6.ff. 7bid. f9f f. 8 Ibid f. 3.0 9% hid. foen hg. 


NOISES OF INSECTS. 537 


recover its convexity ; which, striking upon the mirror and other membranes 
before it escapes from under the operculum, will be modulated and aug- 
mented by them. I sliould imagine that the muscular bundles are extended 
and contracted by the alternate approach and recession of the trunk and 
abdomen to and from each other. . 

And now, my friend, what adorable wisdom, what consummate art and 
skill are displayed in the admirable contrivance and complex structure of 
this wonderful, this unparalleled apparatus! The Great Creator has 
- placed in these insects an organ for producing and emitting sounds, which 
in the intricacy of its construction seems to resemble that which he has 
given to man, and the larger animals, for receiving them. Here isa cochlea; 
a meatus ; and, as it should seem, more than one tympanum. 


Iam, &c. 


538 


LETTER XXV. 
ON LUMINOUS INSECTS. 


We boast of our candles, our wax-lights, and our Argand lamps, and 
pity our fellow-men who, ignorant of our: methods of producing artificial 
light, are condemned to pass their nights in darkness. We regard these 
inventions as the results of a great exertion of human intellect, and never 
conceive it possible that other animals are able to avail themselves of 
modes of illumination equally efficient, and are furnished with the means 
of guiding their nocturnal evolutions by actual lights, similar in their effect 

_to those which we make use of. Yet many insects are thus provided. 
Some are forced to content themselves with a single candle, not more 
vivid than the rush-light which glimmers in the peasant’s cottage ; others 
exhibit two or three, which cast a stronger radiance ; and a few can dis- 
play a lamp little inferior in brilliancy to some of ours. Not that these 
insects are actually possessed of candles and lamps. You are aware that 
I am speaking figuratively. But Providence has supplied them with an 
effectual substitute—a luminous preparation orsecretion, which has all the 
advantages of our lamps and candles without their inconveniences ; which 
gives light sufficient to direct their motions, while it is incapable of burn- 
ing ; and whose lustre is maintained without needing fresh supplies of oil 
or the application of the snuffers. 

Of the insects thus singularly provided, the common glow-worm (Lam- 
pyris noctiluca) is the most familiar instance. Who that has ever enjoyed 
the luxury of a summer evening’s walk in the country, in the southern 
parts of our island, but has viewed with admiration these “stars of the 
earth and diamonds of the night?” And if, living like me in a district where 
it is rarely met with, the first time you saw this insect chanced to be, as 
it was in my case, one of those delightful evenings which an English sum- 
mer seldom yields, when not a breeze disturbs the balmy air, and “ every 
sense is joy,” and hundreds of these radiant worms, studding their mossy 
couch with mild effulgence, were presented to your wondering eye in the 
course of a quarter of a mile,—you could not help associating with the 
name of glow-worm the most pleasing recollections. No wonder that an 
insect, which chiefly exhibits itself on occasions so interesting, and whose 
economy is so remarkable, should have afforded exquisite images and illus- 
trations to those poets who have cultivated Natural History. 

If you take one of these glow-worms home with you for examination, 
you will find that in shape it somewhat resembles a caterpillar, only that 
it is much more depressed ; and you will observe that the light proceeds 
from a pale-colored patch that terminates the under side of the abdomen. 
It is not, however, the larva of an insect, but the perfect female of a 
winged beetle, from which it is altogether so different that nothing but 
actual observation could have inferred the fact of their being the sexes of 


LUMINOUS INSECTS. 539 


the same insect. In the course of our inquiries you will find that sexual 
differences even more extraordinary exist in the insect world. 

It has been supposed by many that the males of the different species 
of Lampyris do not possess the property of giving out any light; but it is 
now ascertained that this supposition is inaccurate, though their light is 
much less vivid than that of the female. Ray first pointed out this fact 
with respect to L. noctiluca', which has two luminous points on the penul- 
timate abdominal segment. In the males of L. splendidula and of L. 
hemiptera the light is very distinct, and may be seen in the former while 
flying. The females, like the males, have the same faculty of extinguish- 
ing or concealing their light—a very necessary provision to guard them 
from the attacks of nocturnal birds; Mr. White even thinks that they 
regularly put it out between eleven and twelve every night*: and they 
have also the power of rendering it for a while more vivid than ordinary. 

Authors who have noticed the luminous parts of the common female 
glow-worm having usually contented themselves with stating that the light 
issues from the three last ventral segments of the abdomen’, I shall give 
you the result of some observations I once made upon this subject. One 
evening, in the beginning of July, meeting with two of these insects, I 
placed them on my hand. At first their light was exceedingly brilliant, 
so as to appear even at the junctions of the upper or dorsal segments of 
the abdomen. Soon after I had taken them, one withdrew its light 
altogether, but the other continued to shine. While it did this it was laid 
upon its back, the abdomen forming an angle with the rest of its body, 
and the last or anal segment being kept in constant motion. This seg- 
ment was distinguished by two round and very vivid spots of light; which, 
in the specimen that had ceased to shine, were the last that disappeared, 
and they seem to be the first parts that become luminous when the animal 
is disposed to yield its light. ‘The penultimate and antepenultimate seg- 
ments each exhibited a middle transverse band of yellow radiance, ter- 
minated towards the trunk by an obtusely-dentated line; a greener and 
fainter light being emitted by the rest of the segment. . 

Though many of the females of the Lampyrida, are without wings, 
and even elytra (in which circumstance they differ from all other apterous 
Coleoptera), this is not the case with all. The female of Pygolampis® 
Ttalica, a species: common in Italy, and which, if we may trust to the 
accuracy of the account given by Mr. Waller in the Philosophical T'rans- 
actions for 1684, would seem to have been taken by him in Hertfordshire, 
is winged; and when a number of these moving stars are seen to dart 
through the air ina dark night, nothing can have a more beautiful effect. 
Sir J. E. Smith tells us that the beaus of Italy are accustomed in an 
evening to adorn the heads of the ladies with these artificial diamonds, by 
sticking them into their hair; and a similar custom, as I have before 
informed you, prevails amongst the ladies of India. 

Besides the different species of the genus Lampyris, all of which, to 
the number of nearly two hundred, now divided into several distinct 
genera, are probably more or less luminous, another insect of the beetle 

1 Hist. Ins. 81. ? Tiliger, Mag. iv. 195. 3 Nat. Hist. ii. 279. 

4 Geoffr. i. 167. De Geer, iv. 35. 


5 I call by this name all those Lampiride whose head is not at all, or but little, concealed 
by the shield of the prothorax, and both sexes of which are winged. 


540 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 


tribe, Elater noctilucus, is endowed with the same pfoperty, and that in a 
much higher degree. This insect, which is called the fire-fly, and is an 
inch long, and about one third of an inch broad, gives out its principal 
light from two transparent eye-like tubercles placed upon the thorax ; 
but there is also a luminous patch in the posterior and inferior region of 
the metathorax, in a somewhat triangular and depressed cavity ordinarily 
concealed by the elytra, but when these are expanded in the act of fly- 
ing giving out a more considerable but more diffused light than the tho- 
racic reservoirs ; in fact the whole body is full of light, which shines out 
between the abdominal segments when stretched; and being strongly 
reflected by the two basal abdominal segments, gives an appearance of 
the two luminous patches there which De Geer has described, but which 
do not actually exist.' The light emitted by the two thoracic tubercles 
alone is so considerable, that the smallest print may be read by moving one 
of these insects along the lines; and in the West India islands, particu- 
larly in St. Domingo, where they are very common, the natives were 
formerly accustomed to employ these living lamps, which they called 
Cucuij, instead of candles in performing their evening household occu- 
pations. In traveling at night they used to tie one to each great toe; 
and in fishing and hunting required no other flambeau.* Southey has 
happily introduced this inseet in his “ Madoc,” as furnishing the lamp by 
which Coatel rescued the British hero from the hands of the Mexican 
priests. 


“‘ She beckon’d and descended, and drew out 
From underneath her vest a cage, or net 
It rather might be call’d, so fine the twigs 
Which knit it, where, confined, two Fire-flies gave 
Their lustre. By that light did Madoc first 
Behold the features of his lovely guide.” 


Pietro Martire tells us that the Cucuij serve the natives of the Spanish 
West India Islands not only instead of candles, but as extirpators of the 
gnats, which are a dreadful pest to the inhabitants of the low grounds. 
They introduce a few fire-flies, to which the gnats are a grateful food, 
into their houses, and by means of these ‘ commodious hunters” are soon 
rid of the intruders. ‘ How they are a remedy,” says this author, “ for 
so great a mischiefe it is a pleasant thing to hear. Hee who under- 
standeth he hath those troublesome guestes (the gnattes) at home, dili- 
gently hunteth after the Cucuij. Whoso wanteth Cucuij goeth out of the 
house in the first twilight of the night, carrying-a burning fire-brande in 
his hande, and ascendeth the next hillock that the Cucuij may see it, and 
he swingeth the fire-brand about, calling Cucuius aloud, and beating the 
ayre with often calling out Cucuie, Cucuie.” He goes on to observe, 
that the simple people believe the insect is attracted by their invitations ; 
but that, for his part, he is rather inclined to think that the fire is the 
magnet. Having obtained a sufficient number of Cucuij, the beetle- 
hunter returns home and lets them fly loose in the house, where they dili- 
gently seek the gnats about the beds and the faces of those asleep, and 
devour them.°—These insects are also applied to purposes of decoration. 
~ Y Lacordaire, Introd. d0Entom. idl. #2... .  « oe 

* Pletro Martire, The Decades of the New World, quoted in Madoc, p. 543. 


° P. Martire, udbi supr. Dr. Burmeister disbelieves this account, because Elaters are not 
carnivorous, but feed upon nectar and pollen ( Manual, 492.) ; but considering what nume- 


7 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 541 


On certain festival days, in the month of June, they are collected in great 
numbers, and tied all over the garments of the young people, who gallop 
through the streets on horses similarly ornamented, producing on a dark 
evening the effect of a large moving body of light. On such occasions 
the lover displays his gallantry by decking his mistress with these living 
gems.' And according to P. Martire, ‘many wanton wilde fellowes” 
rub their faces with the flesh of a killed Cucuius, as boys with us use 
phosphorus, “with purpose to meet their neighbors with a flaming coun- 
tenance,” and derive amusement from their fright. 

Besides Elater noctilucus, E. ignitus and several others of the same 
genus are luminous. Not fewer than twelve species of this family are 
described by Illiger in the Berlin Naturalist Society’s Magazine”, under 
the name of Pyrophorus ; and at least seventy species are now known, 
all natives of the hot and temperate regions of America, from Chili to 
the south of the United States, where they are to be seen almost the 
whole year at the approach of night, both the sexes being equally 
Juminous.® 

The brilliant nocturnal spectacle presented by these insects to the 
inhabitants of the countries where they abound cannot be better/described 
than in the language of the poet above referred to, who has thus related 
its first effect upon the British visitors of the new world :— 

eel Dab iver ot Fa) 4 i\iei" Sorrowing we beheld 
The night come on; but soon did night display 
More wonders than it veil’d : innumerous tribes 
From the wood-cover swarm’d, and darkness made 
Their beauties visible: one while they stream’d 
A bright blue radiance upon flowers that closed 
Their gorgeous colors from the eye of day ; 
Now motionless and dark, eluded search, 
Self-shrouded ; and anon, starring the sky, 
Rose like a shower of fire.” 

The beautiful poetical imagery with which Mr. Southey has decorated 
this and a few other entomological facts, will make you join in my regret 
that a more extensive acquaintance with the science has not enabled him 
to spread his embellishments over a greater number. ‘The gratification 
which the entomologist derives from seeing his favorite study adorned 
with the graces of poetry is seldom unalloyed with pain, arising from the 
inaccurate knowledge of the subject in the poet. Dr. Darwin’s descrip- 
tion of the beetle to which the nut-maggot is transformed may delight him 
(at least if he be an admirer of the Darwinian style) as he reads for the 
first time, 


‘So sleeps in silence the Curculio, shut 
In the dark chamber of the cavern’d nut ; 
Erodes with ivory beak the vaulted shell, 
And quits on filmy wings its narrow cell.” 


But when the music of the lines has allowed him room for pause, and he 


rous exceptions we are constantly finding occur to all such supposed general rules, it seems 
premature to reject on such grounds the very circumstantial details of P. Martire. In the 
same way as some of the Carabide and Coccinellide have been ascertained to feed on vege- 
table food, though both families are in general carnivorous, it may be found that some of 
the Elateride prefer an animal diet and will eat gnats. 

1 Walton’s Present State of the Spanish Colonies, i. 128. 2 Jahrgang, i. 141. 

3 Lacordaire, Introd. a I’ Entom. ii. 140. See Dr. Germar’s monograph on this genus, 
containing descriptions of seventy-nine species, in the Zeitschr. f. d. Ent. vol. iii. (1841.) 


46 


542 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 


recollects that they are built wholly upon an incorrect supposition, the 
Curculio never inhabiting the nut in its beetle shape, nor employing its 
ivory or rather ebony beak upon it, but undergoing its transformation 
under ground, he feels disappointed that the passage has not truth as well 
as sound. Mr. Southey, too, has fallen into an error: he confounds the 
fire-fly of St. Domingo (Elater noctilucus) with a quite different insect, 
the lantern-fly (Fulgora laternaria) of Madame Merian ; but happily this 
error does not affect his poetry. 

But to return from this digression.—If we are to believe Mouffet (and 
the story is not incredible), the appearance of the tropical fire-flies on 
one occasion led to a more important result than might have been expect- 
ed from such a cause. He tells us, that when Sir Thomas Cavendish 
and Sir Robert Dudley first landed in the West Indies, and saw in the 
evening an infinite number of moving lights in the woods, which were 
merely these insects, they supposed that the Spaniards were advancing 
upon them, and immediately betook themselves to their ships’: a result 
as well entitling the Elaters to a commemoration feast as a similar good 
office the Jand-crabs of Hispaniola, which, as the Spaniards tell (and the 
story is confirmed by an anniversary Fiesta de los Cangrejos), by their 
clattering—mistaken by the enemy for the sound of Spanish cavalry close 
upon their heels—in like manner scared away a body of English invaders 
of the city of St. Domingo.? ° 

An anecdote less improbable, perhaps, and certainly more ludicrous, is 
related by Sir J. E. Smith of the effect of the first sight of the Italian 
elow-worms upon some Moorish ladies ignorant of such appearances. 
These females had been taken prisoners at sea, and, until they could be 
ransomed, lived in a house in the outskirts of Genoa, where they were 
frequently visited by the respectable inhabitants of the city ; a party of 
whom, on going one evening, were surprised to find the house closely 
shut up, and their Moorish friends in the greatest grief and consternation. 
On inquiring into the cause, they ascertained that some of the Pygo- 
lampis Italica had found their way into the dwelling, and that the ladies 
within bad taken it into their heads that these brilliant guests were no 
other than the troubled spirits of their relations; of which idea it was 
some time before they could be divested—The common people in Italy 
have a superstition respecting these insects somewhat similar, believing 
that they are of a spiritual nature, and proceed out of the graves, and 
hence carefully avoid them.* 

In addition to the Lampyride and Elaterida, it seems probable that 
other coleopterous families include luminous species. Chiroscelis bifenes- 
trata of Lamarck, a beetle, has two red oval spots covered with a downy 
membrane on the second segment of the abdomen, which he thinks indi- 
cate some particular organ, perhaps luminous*; and M. Latreille informed 
me that a friend of his, who saw one living which was brought from 
China to the Isle of France in wood, found that the ocelli in the elytra of 
Buprestis ocellata were luminous. One of the longicorn beetles, Dadoy- 
chus flavocinctus Chevrolat (allied to Saperda), has the third and fourth 
segments of the abdomen with the same yellow color and appearance of the ° 


1 112, : Walton’s Hispaniola, i. 39. 
3 Tour on the Continent, 2d Edit. iii. 85. 4 Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 262. 


LUMINOUS INSECTS. 543 


luminous segments of the Lampyride, whence M. Chevrolat infers that it 
is like them luminous; and M. de Laporte informs him that a considerable 
number of Brazilian Helopide, allied to Stenochia, present a similar char- 
acter indicating a like property.' 

The insects hitherto adverted to have been beetles, or of the order 
Coleoptera. But besides these, a genus in the order Hemiptera, called 
Fulgora, includes several species which are supposed to emit so powerful 
a light as to have obtained in English the generic appellation of Lantern- 
jlies. Two of the most conspicuous of this tribe are the F. laternaria 
and F’. candelaria; the former a native of South America, the latter of 
China. Both, as indeed is the case with the whole genus, are supposed 
to have the material which diffuses their light included in a subtransparent 
projection of the head. In F. candelaria this projection is of a subcylin- 
drical shape, recurved at the apex, above an inch in length, and the 
thickness of a small quill. In EF. laternaria, which is an insect two or 
three inches long, the snout is much larger and broader, and more of an 
oval shape, and sheds a light the brilliancy of which is said to transcend 
that of any other luminous insect. Madame Merian informs us, that the 
first discovery which she made of this property caused her no small 
alarm. The Indians had brought her several of these insects, which by 
day-light exhibited no extraordinary appearance, and she inclosed them in 
a box until she should have an opportunity of drawing them, placing it 
upon a table in her lodging-room. In the middle of the night the con- 
fined insects made such a noise as to awake her, and she opened the box, 
the inside of which to her great astonishment appeared all in a blaze; 
and in her fright letting it fall, she was not less surprised to see each of 
the insects apparently on fire. She soon, however, divined the cause of 
this unexpected phenomenon, and reinclosed her brilliant guests in their 
place of confinement. She adds, that the light of one of these Fulgore 
is sufficiently bright to read a newspaper by: and though the tale of her 
having drawn one of these insects by its own light is without foundation, 
she doubtless might have done so if she had chosen.” 


1 Chevrolat in Silbermann’s Rev. Entom. i. t. 14. 

2 Ins. Sur. 49.—The above account of the luminous properties of Fulgora laternaria is 
given, because negative evidence ought not hastily to be allowed to set aside facts positively 
asserted by an author who could have no conceivable motive for inventing such a fable ; 
but it is necessary to state, that not only have several of the inhabitants of Cayenne, ac- 
cording to the French Dictionnaire d’ Histoire Naturelle, denied that this insect shines, in which 
denial they are joined by M. Richard, who reared the species (Encyclopédie, att. Fulgora), 
but the learned and accurate Count Hoffmansegg informs us, that his insect collector Sieber, 
a practised entomologist of thirty years’ standing, and who, when in the Brazils for some 
years, took many specimens, affirms that he never saw a single one in the least luminous. 
(Der Gesellschaft Naturf. Fr. zu Berlin Mag. i. 153.) On the other hand M. Lacordaire 
states, that though he never saw a luminous individual of this species, either in Brazil or 
Cayenne, and though the majority of the inhabitants of the latter country whom he ques- 
tioned on the subject equally denied its being luminous, yet that others asserted the fact ; 
and as he himself, a cautious observer on the spot, asks if this contradictory testimony may 
not be reconciled by supposing that one of the sexes is ]uminous and the other not, it seems 
clearly best to infer with this acute entomologist, that the luminosity of Fulgora laternaria is 
a point rather requiring new observations than yet absolutely deciding either way (Introd. a 
P Ent. ii. 143.), especially when we find the Marquis Spinola, in his elaborate paper on this 
tribe in the Ann. Soc. Ent. de France (viii. 163.), strongly contending for the luminous 
character of the cephalic protuberance of the whole tribe, and when moreover a friend of 
M. Wesmael assured him that he had himself seen F. /aternaria luminous when alive. 
(Westwood, Mod. Class. ii. 430.) We learn from Mr. Westwood that Dr. Cantor, who is at 
present*(iS4£) engaged in the Chinese expedition, has informed Mr. Hope that he has not 
observed the slightest luminosity in the common Chinese species. 


544 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 


In addition to the insects already mentioned, some others haye the 
power of diffusing light, as two species of Centipedes (Geophilus electricus 
and phosphoreus), and probably others of the same genus. In these the 
light is not confined to one part, but proceeds from the whole body. G. 
electricus is a common insect in this country, residing under clods of earth, 
and often visible at night in gardens. G.? phosphoreus, a native of 
Asia, is an obscure species, described by Linné, on the authority of C. 
G. Ekeberg, the captain of a Swedish East Indiaman, who asserted that 
it dropped from the air, shining like a glow-worm, upon his ship, when 
sailing in the Indian Ocean a hundred miles (Swedish) from the continent. 
However singular this statement, it is not incredible. The insect may 
either, as Linné suspects, have been elevated into the atmosphere by 
wings with which, according to him, one species of the genus is provided ; 
or more probably, perhaps, by a strong wind, such as that which raised 
into the air the shower of insects mentioned by De Geer as occurring in 
Sweden in the winter of 1749, after a violent storm that had torn up 
trees by the roots, and carried away to a great distance the surrounding 
earth, and insects which had taken up their winter quarters amongst it.! 
That the wind may convey the light body of an insect to the above-men- 
tioned distance from land, you will not dispute when you call to mind 
that our friend Hooker, in his interesting Tour in Iceland, tells us that the 
ashes from the eruption of one of the Icelandic volcanoes in 1755 were 
conveyed to Ferrol, a distance of upwards of 300 miles.2—Lastly, to 
conclude my list of Juminous insects, Professor Afzelius observed ‘a dim 
phosphoric light” to be emitted from the singular hollow antenne of Pau- 
sus spherocerus.’ A similar appearance has been noticed in the eyes of 
Acronycta Psi, Cossus ligniperda, and other moths; and M. Audouin 
stated to the Entomological Society of France that a Russian naturalist 
(M. Gimmerthal) had observed the caterpillars of Noctua (Polia) occulta 
to be luminous.* This observation as to another species has been con- 
firmed by Dr. Boisduval, who one evening of the hot days of June found 
on the stems of grass caterpillars which spread a phosphorescent light, 
and which he thought were those of Mamestra oleracea, though they 
seemed larger than common ; and whether from want of care, or that their 
luminosity depended on disease, none of them assumed the pupa state. 
They certainly, he says, were not the larve of Polia occulta. 

But besides the insects here enumerated, others may be luminous which 
have not hitherto been suspected of being so. ‘This seems proved by the 
following fact. A learned friend® has informed me, that when he was 
curate of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire, in 1780, a farmer of that place of the 
name of Simpringham brought to him a mole-cricket (@ryllotalpa vulga- 


1 De Geer, iv. 63. These insects, which were chiefly Brachyptera L., Aphodii, spiders, 
caterpillars, but particularly the larvee of Telephorus fuscus, fell in such abundance that they 
might have been taken from the snow by handfuls. Other showers of insects which have 
been recorded, as that in Hungary, 2Uth November, 1672 (Ephem. Nat. Curios. 1673, 80.), 
and one mentioned in the newspapers of July 2d, 1810, to have fallen in France the January 
preceding, accompanied by a shower of red snow, may evidently be explained in the same 
manner. 2 p. 407. 

% Linn. Trans. iv. 261. Mr. Westwood, however, in his monograph on this genus, attri- 
butes this rather to the action of the light upon the highly polished surface of the spherical 
club of the antenne. 

4 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, i. 424. 5 Silbermann, Rev. Entom. i 226. 

8 Rev. Dr. Sutton of Norwich. 


LUMINOUS INSECTS. 545 


ris Latr.) and told him that one of his people, seeing a Jack-o’lantern, 
pursued it and knocked it down, when it proved to be this insect, and the 
identical] specimen shown to him. 

This singular fact, while it renders it probable that some insects are 
luminous which no one has imagined to be so, seems to afford a clue to 
the, at least, partial explanation of the very obscure subject of ignes fatua, 
and to show that there is considerable ground for the opinion long ago 
maintained by Ray and Willughby, that the majority of these supposed 
meteors are no other than luminous insects. ‘That the large varying lam- 
bent flames, mentioned by Beccaria to be very common in some parts of 
Italy, and the luminous globe seen by Dr. Shaw! cannot be thus explained, 
is obvious. ‘These were probably electrical phenomena: certainly not 
explosions of phosphureted hydrogen, as has been suggested by some, 
which must necessarily have been momentary. But that the agnis fatwus 
mentioned by Derham as having been seen by himself, and which he 
describes as flitting about a thistle?, was, though he seems of a different 
Opinion, no other than some luminous insect, I have little doubt. Mr. 

‘Sheppard informs me that, traveling one night between Stamford and 
Grantham on the top of the stage, he observed for more than ten minutes 
a very large ignis fatuus in the low marshy grounds, which had every 
appearance of being an insect. The wind was very high: consequently, 
had it been a vapor, it must have been carried forward in a direct line; 
but this was not the case. It had the same motions as a Tipula, flying 
upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards, sometimes appearing 
as settled, and sometimes as hovering in the air.—Whatever be the true 
nature of these meteors, of which so much is said and so little known, it 
is singular how few modern instances of their having been observed are 
on record. Dr. Darwin declares, that though in the course of a long life 
he had been out in the night, and in the places where they are said to 
appear, times without number, he had never seen any thing of the kind: 
and from the silence of other philosophers of our own times, it should seem 
that their experience is similar.® 


1 Travels, 2d ed. 334. . 2 Phil. Trans. 1729, 204. 

3 A paper by Richard Chambers, Esq.,in the Magazine of Nat. Hist. (New Series, i. 353.), 
relates several facts observed by the celebrated botanists Mr. James Dickson, and Mr. Curtis, 
author of the Flora Londinensis, T. Stothard, Esq. R. A. (who was, as before mentioned, a 
zealous entomologist), his father, Mr. A. Chambers, and Joseph Simpson, a fisherman, at 
Frieston near Boston, all strongly corroborating the above statements as to the probability 
that at least some ignis fatui are caused by luminous insects. George Wailes, Esq., on the 
other hand, has given in the Entom. Mag. i. 351, the result of his father’s observations and 
his own, and has also quoted those of Major Blesson, from Jameson’s Edinb. New Phil. 
Journ. for Jan. 1833, in proof “that the moving ignis fatuus of this country always owes its 
origin to the spontaneous ignition of gaseous particles”? (meaning, I presume, phosphureted 
or carbureted hydrogen gas), and consequently cannot be an insect. Without pretending 
to deny that these gases may be a cause of stationary ignes fatui, I confess myself quite 
unable to conceive of a small mass of these inflammable materials “about the size of the 
hand” moving at the height of “three feet from the surface of the ground” and “ for the 
distance of fifty yards nearly parallel with the road,” as in the instance seen by Mr. Waile’s 
father, and being luminous all the time. A mass of hydrogen gas and its compounds, as is 
well known, whether large or small, when once inflamed (and if not inflamed it cannot be 
luminous), burns but for an instant except renewed by a fresh supply. In passing the 
Appenines between Bologna and Florence in 1827, my two sons and myself amused our- 
selves the night we slept at Pietramala, in observing the well known miniature volcano of 
hydrogen gas, near to that\place, which has been burning for centuries; but though there, 
if any where, as it is probable that hydrogen gas rises more or less from crevices in the 
whole adjoining district, there ought to be traveling or flitting lights, if such be possible, we 


46* 


546 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 


With regard to the immediate source of the luminous properties of 
insects, Mr. Macartney ascertained that in the common glow-worm, and 
in Elater noctilucus and ignitus, the light proceeds from masses of a sub- 
stance not generally differing, except in its yellow color, from the intersti- 
tial substance (corps grassieur) of the rest of the body, closely applied 
underneath those transparent parts of the insects’ skin which afford the 
light. In the glow-worm, besides the last-mentioned substance, which, 
when the season for giving light is passed, is absorbed, and replaced by 
the common interstitial substance, he observed on the inner side of the last 
abdominal segment two minute oval sacs formed of an elastic spirally-wound 
fibre similar to that of the trachee, containing a soft yellow substance of a 
closer texture than that which lines the adjoining region, and affording a 
more permanent and brilliant light. ‘This light he found to be Jess under 
the control of the insect than that from the adjoining luminous substance, 
which it has the power of voluntarily extinguishing, not by retracting it 
under a membrane, as Carradori imagined, but by some inscrutable change 
dependent upon its will; and when the latter substance was extracted 
from living glow-worms it afforded no light, while the two saes in like cir- 
cumstances shone uninterruptedly for several hours. Mr. Macartney 
conceives, from the radiated structure of the interstitial substance sur- 
rounding the oval yellow masses immediately under the transparent spots 
in the thorax of Elater noctilucus, and the subtransparency of the adjoin- 
ing crust, that the interstitial substance in this situation has also the pro- 
perty of shining—a supposition which, adverting to the luminous patch 
under its elytra, and the fact that the incisures between the abdominal 
segments shine when stretched, may probably be extended to the whole of 
the interstitial substance of its body. What peculiar organization con- 


neither saw nor heard of any thing of the kind. On the whole, therefore, the evidence up 
to this time would seem to be in favor of the supposition that ignes fatui which flit about 
and travel considerable distances are actually luminous insects as above supposed, however 
rarely they may have come under the notice of entomologists. In the ignes fatui observed 
by M. Weissenborn (Mag. of Nat. Hist. N.S. i. 553.), which were clearly caused by the 
explosion of phosphureted hydrogen, there was “a succession of flashes” extending for 
perhaps half a mile, but they passed over this distance “in less than a second,’—an ap- 
pearance entirely different from those leisurely movements mentioned by Mr. Chambers and 
Mr. Wailes, or that by Mr. Main (Mag. of Nat. Hist. N.S. i. 549.), in which the farmer, 
who said he had knocked the luminous object down, described it as exactly like a “ Maggy 
long-legs”’ ( Tipula oleracea), the very same insect with which Mr. Sheppard compared the 
luminous appearance he witnessed. I will conclude this long note with observing that a 
very strong argument for the possibility of some flying insects being occasionally luminous 
is afforded by the facts above stated of luminous caterpillars having been within these few 
years observed for the first time since entomology has been attended to, and that by observers 
every way competent. If caterpillars so very common as those of Mamestra oleracea may 
sometimes, though so rarely, be luminous, and if, as Dr. Boisduval suggests, and is very 
probable, this appearance was caused by disease, it is obvious that flying insects may be 
also occasionally (though seldom) luminous from disease,—a supposition which will at once 
explain the rarity of the occurrence, and the circumstance that insects of such different 
genera, and even orders, are said to have exhibited this phenomenon. 

1 The following interesting facts, in addition to those of Mr. Macartney, have been 
observed by M. Morren, Professor of Botany in the University of Liege. The corneous 
transparent cap (calotte), which covers the sac enclosing the luminous matter in each lumi- 
nous point of the penultimate abdominal segment of Lampyris noctiluca, presents on its 
exterior surface a network of hexagonal facets, convex above and concave below, consti- 
tuting an apparatus absolutely similar to that invented by Fresnet for increasing the diffu- 
sion of light, and when this exterior portion of the cap is removed, the luminous matter 
loses a great portion of its lustre, which mainly depends on this curious and beautiful con- 
trivance for augmenting it. The central facets are larger and more regular than those of 
the margins, and each facet has in the middle a corneous hair bent backwards, which hairs 


LUMINOUS INSECTS. 547 


tributes to the production of light in the hollow projection of Fulgora 
laternaria, the hollow antenne of Pausus spherocerus, and under the whole 
integument of Geophilus electricus, Mr. Macartney was unable to ascer- 
tain. Respecting this last he remarks, what I have myself observed that 
there is an apparent effusion of a Juminous fluid on its surface, that may 
be received upon the hand, which exhibits a phosphoric light for a few 
seconds afterwards ; and that it will not shine unless it have been previously 
exposed for a short time to the solar light." 

With respect to the remote cause of the luminous property of insects, 
philosophers are considerably divided in opinion. ‘The disciples of modern 
chemistry have in general, with Dr. Darwin, referred it to the slow com- 
bustion of some combination of phosphorus secreted from their fluids by 
an appropriate organization, and entering into combination with the oxygen 
supplied in respiration. This opinion is very plausibly built upon the 
ascertained existence of phosphoric acid as an animal secretion; the great 
resemblance between the light of phosphorus in slow combustion and ani- 
mal light; the remarkably large spiracula in glow-worms, and the decided 
connexion of their light with respiration; and upon the statement, that 
the light of the glow-worm is rendered more brilliant by the application of 
heat and oxygen gas, and is extinguished by cold and by hydrogen and 
carbonic acid gases. [rom these last facts Spallanzani was led to regard 
the luminous matter as a compound of hydrogen and carbureted hydrogen 
gas. Carradori having found that the luminous portion of the belly of 
the Italian glow-worm (Pygolampis Italica) shone in vacuo, in oil, in 
water, and when under other circumstances where the presence of oxygen 
gas was precluded, with Brugnatelli, ascribed the property in question to 
the imbibition of light separated from the food or air taken into the body, 
and afterwards secreted in a sensible form.?, Mr. Macartney having ascer- 
tained by experiment that the light of a glow-worm is not diminished by 
immersion in water, or increased by the application of heat ; that the sub- 
stance affording it, though poetically employed for lighting the fairies’ 


M. Morren conceives are intended to prevent the adhesion of dust. The luminous masses 
contained in the two sacs are intersected in every part with a vast multitude of trachean 
ramifications, which compose also their common envelop, the whole proceeding from a 
large trachea, which issues from a spiracle situated immediately at the side of the luminous 
mass, with which it communicates by a small round lateral orifice near the margin of this 
last; thus fully confirming the opinion of those physiologists who conceive that the lumi- 
nous power under consideration is essentially connected with the act of respiration. In 
fact, M. Morren found that when the spiracle next to the luminous material is closed, the 
light is immediately extinguished, and re-appears when it is opened. If the luminous sac 
be removed with its accompanying trachea, it continues to shine; but if this trachea be 
taken away or compressed so as to hinder the access of air, the sac becomes obscure. 
This fact explains how, in the insects of the genus Lampyris, as well as those of Elater 
(Pyrophorus), the light is not constant, but becomes more feeble at intervals, and why it is 
increased during the flight or other energetic movement of the insect, and diminished when 
it isin repose. It is, in fact, always in proportion to the energy of the respiration of the 
insect, which, having the power of opening or closing its spiracles at will, can thus also 
increase or diminish its light at pleasure, though whenever it respires it cannot prevent it 
from shining. Some differences excepted, the luminous apparatus of Lampyris splendidula 
is similar to that of LZ. noctiluca above described; and it is probable that a similar organiza- 
tion exists in the genus Pyrophorus. 

* Phil. Trans. 1810, p. 281. Mr. Macartney’s statement on this point is not very clear. 
He probably means that the insect will not shine in a dark place in the day time, unless 
previously exposed to the solar light: for it is often seen to shine at night when it could 
have had no recent exposure to the sun. 

* Annal. di Chimica, xiii. 1797. Phil. Mag. ii. 80. 


548 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 


tapers!, is incapable of inflammation if applied to #he flame of a candle 
or red-hot iron; and when separated from the body exhibits no sensible 
heat on the thermometer’s being applied to it—rejects the preceding 
hypotheses as unsatisfactory, but without substituting any other explana- 
tion ; suggesting, however, that the facts he observed are more favorable 
to the supposition of light being a quality of matter than a substance.” 
Lastly, Dr. Todd finding that the luminous substance of Lampyris con- 
tinues to shine when detached, sometimes for a longer and at others a 
shorter period, but never exceeding twenty minutes, and that under mer- 
cury, various gasses, water, and in vacuo, considers it solely as an effect 
of vitality.’ 

Which of these opinions is the more correct I do not pretend to decide. 
But though the experiments of Mr. Macartney seem fairly to bear him out 
in denying the existence of any ordinary combination of phosphorus in 
luminous insects, there exists a contradiction in many of the statements, 
which requires reconciling before final decision can be pronounced. ‘The 
different results obtained by Forster and Spallanzani, who asserts that 
glow-worms shine more brilliantly in oxygen gas, and by Beckerheim, Dr. 
Hulme, and Sir H. Davy, who could perceive no such effect, may perhaps 
be accounted for by the supposition that in the latter instances the insects 
having been taken more recently, might be less sensible to the stimulus of 
the gas than in the former, in which perhaps their irritability was accumu- 
lated by a longer abstinence: but it is not so easy to reconcile the experi- 
ment of Sir H. Davy, who found the light of the glow-worm not to be 
sensibly diminished in hydrogen gas*, with those of Spallanzani and Dr. 
Hulme, who found it to be extinguished by the same gas, as well as by 
carbonic acid, nitrous and sulphureted hydrogen gases.® Possibly some 
of these contradictory results were occasioned by not adverting to the 
faculty which the living insect possesses of extinguishing its lights at 
pleasure. At the same time, however, it may be here observed, that as 
this luminous substance cap be collected in considerable quantities, there 
can be no difficulty in deciding by chemical analysis whether it is really 
phosphoric or not; and that till this analysis has been made it is premature 
to build any hypothesis on the assumption of its being so, or to apply this 
epithet to it, as is so generally done. 

The general use of this singular provision is not much more satisfactorily 
ascertained than its nature. I have before conjectured—and in an 
instance I then related it seemed to be so—that it may be a means of 
defence against their enemies. In different kinds of insects, however, it 


; “ And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, 
And light them at the fiery glow-worms’ eyes.” 

* Some experiments made by my friend the Rev. R. Sheppard on the glow-worm are 
worthy of being recorded.—One of the receptacles being extracted with a penknife, con- 
tinued luminous ; but on being immersed in camphorated spirit of wine, became immediately 
extinct. The animal, with one of its receptacles uninjured, being plunged into the same 
spirit, became apparently lifeless in less than a minute; but the receptacle continued lumi- 
nous for five minutes, the light gradually disappearing.—Having extracted the luminous 
matter from the receptacles, in two days they were healed, and filled with luminous matter 
as before. He found this matter to lose its luminous property, and become dry and glossy 
like gum, in about two minutes; but it recovered it again on being moistened with saliva, 
and again lost it when dried. When the matter was extracted from two or three glow- 
worms, and covered with liquid gum-arabic, it continued luminous for upwards of a quarter 
of an hour. 

3 Phil. Trans. 1824. 4 Phil. Trans. 1810. p. 287. 5 Phil. Trans. 1801, p. 483. 


LUMINOUS INSECTS. 549 


may probably have a different object. Thus in the lantern-flies (F'ulgora), 
whose light precedes them, it may act the part that their name imports, 
enabling them to discover their prey, and to steer themselves safely in the 
night. In the fire-flies (Elater), if we consider the infinite numbers, that 
in certain climates and situations present themselves every where in the 
night, it may distract the attention of their enemies or alarm them. And 
in the glow-worm—since their light is usually most brilliant in the female ; 
in some species, if not all, present only in the season when the sexes are 
destined to meet, and strikingly more vivid at the very moment when the 
meeting takes place—besides the above uses, it is most probably intended 
to conduct the sexes to each other. This seems evidently the design in 
view in those species in which, as in the common glow-worm (L. nocti- 
luca), the females are apterous. ‘The torch which the wingless female, 
doomed to crawl upon the grass, lights up at the approach of night, is a 
beacon which unerringly guides the vagrant male to her “love-illumined 
form,” however obscure the place of her abode. It has been objected, 
however, to this explanation, that—since both larva and pupa, as De Geer 
observed?, and the males shine as well as the females—the meeting of the 
sexes can scarcely be the object of their luminous provision. But this 
difficulty appears to me easily surmounted. As the light proceeds from a 
peculiarly organized substance, which probably must in part be elaborated 
in the larva and pupa states, there seems nothing inconsistent in the fact 
of some light being then emitted with the supposition of its being destined 
solely for use in the perfect state: and the circumstance of the male 
having the same luminous property, no more proves that the superior 
brilliancy of the female is not intended for conducting him to her, than 
the existence of nipples and sometimes of milk in man proves that the 
breast of woman is not meant for the support of her offspring. We often 
see without being able to account for the fact, except on Sir E. Home’s 
idea, that the sex of the ovum is undetermined’, traces of an organization 


in one sex indisputably intended for the sole use of the other. 
IT am, &c. 


? Maller in Illig. Mag. iv. 178. 2 iv. 49, 3 Phil. Trans. 1799, 157. 


550 


LETTER XXVI. 
ON THE HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


Ir insects can boast of enjoying a greater variety of food than many other 
tribes of animals, this advantage seems at first sight more than counter- 
balanced in our climates by the temporary nature of their supply. The 
graminivorous quadrupeds, with few exceptions, however scanty their bill 
of fare, and their carnivorous brethren, as well as the whole race of birds 
and fishes, can at all seasons satisfy, in greater or less abundance, their 
demand for food. But to the great majority of insects, the earth for nearly 
one half of the year is a barren desert, affording no appropriate nutriment. 
As soon as winter has stripped the vegetable world of its foliage, the vast 
hosts of insects that feed on the leaves of plants must necessarily fast 
until the return of spring: and even the carnivorous tribes, such as the 
predaceous beetles, parasitic Hymenoptera, Sphecina, &c., would at that 
period of the year in vain look for their accustomed prey. 

How is this difficulty provided for? In what mode has the Universal 
Parent secured an uninterrupted succession of generations in a class of 
animals for the most part doomed to a six months’ deprivation of the food 
which they ordinarily devour with such voracity? By a beautiful series 
of provisions founded on the faculty, common also to some of the larger 
animals, of passing the winter in a state of torpor—by ordaining that the 
insect shall live through that period, either in an incomplete state of its 
existence when its organs of nutrition are undeveloped, or, if the active 
epoch of its life has commenced, that it shall seek out appropriate hyber- 
nacula, or winter quarters, and in them fall into a profound sleep, during 
which a supply of food is equally unnecessary. 

In two of the four states of existence common to insects, in which 
different tribes pass the winter, namely, the egg and the pupa state, the 
organs for taking food (except in some cases in the latter) are not 
developed, and consequently the animal is incapable of eating. The 
existence of insects in these states during the winter differs from their 
existence in the same form in summer only in the greater length of its 
term. In both seasons food is alike unnecessary, so that their hybernation 
in these circumstances has little or nothing analogous to that of larger 
animals. With this, however, strictly accords their hybernation in the 
larva and imago states, in which their abstinence from food is solely owing 
to the torpor that pervades them, and the consequent non-expenditure of 
the vital powers.—I shall attend to the peculiarities of their hybernation 
in each of these states in the order just laid down; premising that we 
have yet much to learn on this subject, no observations having been 
instituted respecting the state in which multitudes of insects pass the 
winter. 

It is probable that some insects of almost every order hybernate in the 
egg state ; though that these must be comparatively few in number, seems 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 551 


proved from two considerations: first, That the majority of insects assume 
the imago, and deposit their eggs in the summer and early part of autumn, 
when the heat suffices to hatch them in a short period; and secondly, 
That the eggs of a very large proportion of insects require, for their due 
exclusion and the nutriment of the larve springing from them, conditions 
only to be fulfilled in summer, as all those which are laid in young fruits 
and seeds, in the interior and galls of leaves, in insects that exist only 
in summer, &c. ‘The insects which pass the winter in the egg state are 
chiefly such as have several broods in the course of the year, the females 
of the last of which lay eggs that, requiring more heat for their develop- 
ment than then exists, necessarily remain dormant until the return of 
spring. 

The situation in which the female insect places her eggs in order to 
their remaining there through the winter, is always admirably adapted to 
the degree of cold which they are capable of sustaining; and to the 
ensuring a due supply of food for the nascent larve. Thus, with the 
former view, Acrida verrucivora and many other insects whose eggs are 
of a tender consistence, deposit them deep in the earth out of the reach 
of frost ; and with the latter, Clisiocampa neustria, Lasiocampa castrensis, 
Hypogymna dispar, and some other moths, departing from the ordinary 
instinct of their congeners, which teaches them to place their eggs upon 
the leaves of plants, fix theirs to the stem and branches only. That this 
variation of procedure has reference to the hybernation of the eggs of 
these particular species, is abundantly obvious. Insects whose eggs are 
to be hatched in summer usually fix them slightly to the leaves upon 
which the larve are to feed. But it is evident that, were this plan to be 
adopted by those whose eggs remain through the winter, their progeny 
might be blown away along with the leaf to which they are attached, far 
from their destined food. ‘These, therefore, choose a more stable support, 
and carefully fasten them, as has just been observed, either to the trunk 
or branches of the tree, whose young leaves in spring are to be the food 
of the excluded larve. The latter plan is followed by the female of 
Clisiocampa neustria, which curiously gums her eggs in bracelets round 
the twigs of the hawthorn, &c. But another provision is demanded. 
Were these eggs of the usual delicate consistence, and to be attached with 
the ordinary slight gluten, they would have a poor chance of surviving 
the storms of rain and snow and hail to which for six or eight months they 
are exposed. ‘They are therefore covered with a shell much more hard 
and thick than common ; packed as closely as possible to each other ; 
and the interstices are filled up with a tenacious gum, which soon hardens 
the whole into a solid mass almost capable of resisting a penknife. Thus 
secured, they defy the elements, and brave the blasts of winter uninjured. 
The female of Hypogymna dispar, whose eggs have a more tender shell, 
glues them in an oval mass to the stem of a tree (whence the German 
gardeners call the larve Stamm-raupe), and then covers them with a warm 
non-conducting coat of hairs plucked from her own body, equally imper- 
vious to cold and wet. 

Another of those beautiful relations between objects at first sight appa- 
rently unconnected, which at every step reward the votaries of entomo- 
logy, is afforded by the coincidence between the period of the hatching 


552 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


in spring of eggs deposited before winter, and of tHe leafing of the trees 
upon which they have been fixed, and on whose foliage the larve are to 
feed ; which two events, requiring exactly the same temperature, are 
always simultaneous. Of this fact I had a striking exemplification in the 
spring of 1816. On the 20th of February, observing the twigs of the 
birches in the Hull Botanic Garden to be thickly set, especially about the 
buds, with minute oval black eggs of some insect with which I was unac- 
quainted, I brought home a small branch and set it in a jar of water in 
my study, in which is a fire daily, to watch their exclusion. On the 28th 
of March I observed that a numerous brood of Aphides (not A. betula, 
as the wings were without the dark bands of that species) had been 
hatched from them, and that two or three of the lower buds had expanded 
into leaves, upon the sap of which they were greedily feasting. This 
was full a month before either a leaf of the birch appeared, or the egg 
of an Aphis was disclosed in the open air. To view the relation of 
which I am speaking with due admiration, you must bear in mind the 
extremely different periods at which many trees acquire their leaves, and 
the consequent difference demanded in the constitution of the éggs which 
hybernate upon dissimilar species, to ensure their exclusion, though acted 
upon by the same temperature, earlier or later, according to the early or 
Jate foliation of these species. There is no visible difference between the 
conformation of the eggs of the Aphis of the birch and those of the Aphis 
of the ash: yet in the same exposure those of the former shall be hatched, 
simultaneously with the expansion of the leaves, nearly a month earlier 
than those of the latter: thus demonstrably proving that the hybernation 
of these eggs is not accidental, but has been specially ordained by the 
Author of nature, who has conferred on those of each species a peculiar 
and appropriate organization. 

A much greater number of insects pass the winter in the pupa than in the 
egg state; probably nine tenths of the extensive order Lepidoptera, many 
in Hymenoptera, and several in other orders. In placing these pupe in 
security from the too great cold of winter and the attacks of enemies, the 
larve from which they are to be metamorphosed exhibit an anxiety and 
ingenuity evidently imparted to them for this express design. A few are 
suspended without any covering, though usually in a sheltered situation. 
But by far the larger number are concealed under leaves, in the crevices 
or in the trunk of trees, &c., or inclosed in cocoons of silk or other mate- 
rials, and often buried deep under ground out of the reach of frost. One 
reason why so many lepidopterous insects pass the winter as pupe has 
been plausibly assigned by Résel, in remarking that this is the case with 
all the numerous species which feed on annual plants. As these have no 
local habitation, dying one year and springing up from seed in another 
quarter the next, it is obvious that eggs deposited upon them in autumn 
would have no chance of escaping destruction ; and that even if the larve 
were to be hatched before winter, and to hybernate in that state, they 
would have no certainty of being in the neighborhood of their appropriate 
food the next spring. By wintering in the pupa state, these accidents are 
effectually provided against. The perfect insect is not ready to break 
forth until the food of the young, which are to proceed from its eggs, is 


sprung up. 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 553 


To the insects which hybernate in the larva state, of course belong, in 
the first place, all those which exist under that form more than one year ; 
as many Melolonthe, Elateres, Cerambyces, Buprestes, and several species 
of Lbellula, Ephemera, &c. There are also many larve which, though 
their term of life is not a year, being hatched from the egg in autumn, 
necessarily pass the winter in that state, as those of several Anodbia and 
other wood-boring insects ; of Semasta Webcrana and others of the same 
family ; of the second broods of several butterflies, &c. Many of these 
residing in the ground, or in the interior of trees, need no other hyber- 
nacula than the holes which they constantly inhabit ; some, as the aquatic 
larve, merely hide themselves in the sides or muddy bottom of their native 
pools; while others seek for a retreat under moss, dead leaves, stones, and 
the bark of decaying trees. Most of these can boast of no better winter 
quarters than a simple unfurnished hole or cavity; but a few, more pro- 
vident of comfort, prepare themselves an artificial habitation. With this 
view the larva of Cossus ligniperda, as formerly observed in describing 
the habitations of insects, forms a covering of pieces of wood lined with 
fine silk ; those of Hepiolus Humuli, Xylina radicea, and some other moths, 
excavate under a stone a cavity exactly the size of their bodies, to which 
they give all round a coating of silk', and the larve of Pieris Crategi 
inclose themselves in autumn in cases of the same material®, and thus pass 
the cold season, in small societies of from two to twelve, under a common 
covering formed of leaves. Bonnet mentions a trait of the cleanliness of 
these insects which is almost ludicrous. He observed in one of these nests 
a sort of sack containing nothing but grains of excrement; and a friend 
assured him that he had seen one of these caterpillars partly protrude itself 
out of its case, the hind feet first, to eject a similar grain ; so that it would 
seem the society have on their establishment a scavenger, whose business 
it is to sweep the streets and convey the rejectamenta to one grand reposi- 
tory !? This, however singular, is rendered not improbable from the fact 
that beavers dig in their habitations holes solely destined for a like pur- 
pose‘, as also do badgers. 

A very considerable number of insects hybernate in the perfect state, 
chiefly of the orders Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, and Diptera, 
and especially of the first. Vanessa Urtice, Jo, and a few other lepidop- 
terous species, with a small proportion of the other orders, occasionally sur- 
vive the winter; but the bulk of these are rarely found to hybernate as 
perfect insects. Of coleopterous insects, Schmid, to whom we are 
indebted for some valuable remarks on the present subject*, says that he 
never found or heard of any entomologist finding a hybernating individual 
of the common cock-chafer (Melolontha vulgaris), or of the stag-beetle 
(Lucanus Cervus) ; and suggests that it is only those insects which exist 
but a short period as larve, as most of the tribe of weevils, lady-birds, 


' Brahm, Ins. Kal. ii. 59, 118. 

* I have reason to think that the larva of some species of Hemerobius thus protect them- 
selves by a net-like case of silken threads; at least I found one to-day (December 3d, 1816) 
inclosed in a case of this description concealed under the bark of a tree; and it is not very 
likely that it could be a cocoon, both because the inhabitant was not a pupa, which state, 
according to Reaumur, is assumed soon after the cocoon is fabricated (iii. 385.), and because 
the same author describes the cocoons of these insects as perfectly spherical and of a very 
close texture (384.), while this was oblong, and the net-work with rather wide meshes. 

3 uv. ii. 72. 4 Ibid. ix. 167. 5 Tllig. Mag. i. 209—228. 


47 


554 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


&c., that survive the winter in the perfect state; while those which live 
more than one year in the larva state, as the species just mentioned, are 
deprived of this privilege. 

Towards the close of autumn the whole insect world, particularly the 
tribe of beetles, is in motion. A general migration takes place: the 
various species quit their usual haunts, and betake themselves in search of 
secure hybernacula. Different species, however, do not select precisely 
the same time for making this change of abode. ‘Thus many lady-birds, 
field-bugs, and flies are found out of their winter quarters even after the 
commencement of frost; while others, as Schmid has remarked, make 
good their retreat long before any severe cold has been felt; in fact, | am 
led to believe, from my own observations, that this is the case with the 
majority of colecpterous insects; and that the days which they select for 
retiring to their hybernacula are some of the warmest days of autumn, 
when they may be seen in great numbers alighting on walls, rails, path- 
ways, &c., and running into crevices and cracks, evidently in search of 
some object very different from those which ordinarily guide their move- 
ments. I have noticed this assemblage in different years, but more par- 
ticularly in the autumn of 1816. Walking on the banks of the Humber 
on the 14th of October about noon,—the day bright, calm, and deli- 
ciously mild, Fahrenheit’s thermometer 58° in the shade,—my attention 
was first attracted by the pathways swarming with nemerous species of 
rove-beetles (Staphylinus, Oxytelus, Aleochara, &c.), which kept inces- 
santly alighting, and hurrying about in every direction. On further 
examination I found a similar assemblage, with the addition of multitudes 
of other beetles, Haltice, Nitidule, Rhyncophora, Cryptophagt, &c., on 
every post and rail in my walk, as well as on a wall in the neighborhood ; 
and on removing the decaying mortar and bark, I found that some had 
already taken up their abode in holes, from their situation, with their 
antenne folded, evidently meant for winter quarters. [ am not aware that 
any author has noticed this remarkable congregation of coleopterous insects 
previously to hybernating, which it is so difficult to explain on any of the 
received theories of torpidity, except the pious Lesser, who so expressly 
alludes to it, and without quoting any other authority, that he would seem to 
have derived the fact from his own observation.! 

The site chosen by different perfect insects for their hybernacula is 
very various. Some are content with insinuating themselves under any 
large stone, a collection of dead leaves, or the moss of the sheltered side 
of an old wall or bank. Others prefer for a retreat the lichen or ivy- 
covered interstices of the bark of old trees, the decayed bark itself, espe- 
cially that near the roots, or bury themselves deep in the rotten trunk ; 
and a very great number penetrate into the earth to the depth of several 
inches. ‘The aquatic tribes, such as Dytisci, Hydrophili, &c., burrow 
into the mud of their pools; but some of these are occasionally met 


! Lesser, 1. i. 256. Lyonet inserfs a note to explain that Lesser’s remark is to be under- 
stood only of such insects as live in societies; and adds, that solitary species do not assem- 
ble to pass the winter together. Lesser, however, says nothing about these insects passing 
the winter together, as his translator erroneously understands him; but merely that they 
assemble as if preparing to retire for the winter, which my own observations, as above, con- 
firm. His expression in the original German is, “gleichsam als wenn sie sich zu ihrer 
winter-ruhe fertig machen wolten.” Edit. Frankfurt und Leipsig, 1738, p. 152. 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 550 


with under stones, bark, &c. In every instance the selected dormi- 
tory is admirably adapted to the constitution, mode of life, and wants of 
the occupant. Those insects which can bear considerable cold without 
injury are careless of providing other than a slight covering; while the 
more tender species either enter the earth beyond the reach of frost, or 
prepare for themselves artificial cavities in substances, such as moss and 
rotten wood, which conduct heat with difficulty, and defend them from 
an injuriously’ low temperature. It does not appear that any perfect 
insect has the faculty of fabricating for itself a winter abode similar to 
those formed of silk, &c., by some larve. Schmid, indeed, has men- 
tioned finding Rhagium mordax and Inquisitor’ in such abodes, con- 
structed, as he thought, of the inner bark of trees; but these, as Illiger 
has suggested, were more probably the deserted dwellings of lepidopterous 
larve, of which the beetles in question had taken possession.1 Most 
insects place themselves in their hybernacula in the attitude which they 
ordinarily assume when at rest; but others choose a position peculiar to 
their winter abode. So most of the ground-beetles (Eutrechina) adhere 
by their claws to the under side of the stone which serves for their retreat, 
their backs being next to the ground; in which posture, probably, they 
are most effectually protected from wet. Gyrohypnus sanguinolentus, and 
other rove-beetles of the same genus, coils itself up like a snake, with the 
head in the centre. 

The majority of insects pass the winter in perfect solitude. Occasion- 
ally, however, several individuals of one species, not merely of such 
insects as Anchomenus prasinus, a beetle, Pyrrhocoris apterus, a bug, &c., 
which usually in summer also live in a sort of society, but of others which 
are never seen thus to associate, as Haltica oleracea, Carabus intricatus, 
and several Coccinelle, &c., are found crowded together. ‘This is per- 
haps often more through accident than design, as individuals of the same 
species are frequently met with singly ; yet that it is not wholly accidental 
seems proved by the fact that such assemblages are generally of the same 
genus and even species. Sometimes, however, insects of dissimilar genera 
and even orders are met with together. Schmid once in February found 
the rare Lomechusa strumosa torpid in an ant-hill, in the midst of a con- 
glomerated lump of ants, with which it was closely intertwined.” 

By far the greater proportion of insects pass the winter only in one or 
other of the several states of egg, pupa, larva, or imago, but are never 
found to hybernate in more than one. Some species, however, depart from 
this rule. Thus Aphis Rose, Cardui, and probably many others of the 
genus, hybernate both in the egg and perfect state?; Cynthia Cardui, 
Gonepterye Rhamni, and some other species, usually in the pupa, but 
often in the perfect state also; and Vanessa Io, according to the accu- 
rate Brahm, in the three states of ege, pupa, and imago.* It is proba- 
ble that in these instances the -perfect insects are females, which, not 
having been impregnated, have their term of life prolonged beyond the 
ordinary period. 

The first cold weather, after insects have entered their winter quarters, 
produces effects upon them similar to those which occur in the dormouse, 


1 Tilig. Mag. i. 216. * Ibid. i. 491. 
3 Kyber in Germar, Magazin der Entomologie, ii. 2. 4 Ins. Kal. ii. 188. 


556 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


hedgehog, and others of the larger animals subject "to torpor. At first a 
partial benumbment takes place; but the insect, if touched, is still capa- 
ble of moving its organs. But as the cold increases all the animal 
functions cease. ‘The insect breaths no longer, and has no need of a 
supply of air!, its nutritive secretions cease ; no more food is required ; 
and it has all the external symptoms of death. In this state it continues 
during the existence of great cold, but the degree of its torpidity varies 
with the temperature of the atmosphere. ‘The recurrence of a mild day, 
such as we sometimes have in winter, infuses a partial animation into the 
stiffened animal: if disturbed, its limbs and antenne resume their power 
of extension, and even the faculty of spirting out their defensive fluid is 
re-acquired by many beetles.2 But however mild the atmosphere in 
winter, the great bulk of hybernating insects, as if conscious of the decep- 
tious nature of their pleasurable feelings, and that no food could then be 
procured, never quit their quarters, but quietly wait for a renewal of their 
insensibility by a fresh accession of cold. 

On this head I have had an opportunity of making some observations 
which, in the paucity of recorded facts on the hybernation of insects, you 
may not be sorry to have laid before you. The 2d of December 1816 
was even finer than many of the preceding days of the season, which 
so happily falsified the predictions that the unprecedented dismal sum- 
mer would be followed by a severe winter. ‘he thermometer was 46° 
in the shade; not a breath of air was stirring ; and a bright sun imparted 
animation to troops of the winter gnat (T'richocera hiemalis), which 
frisked under every bush ; to numerous Psychod@ ; and even to the flesh- 
fly, of which two or three individuals buzzed past me while digging in 
my garden. Yet though these insects, which I shall shortly advert to 
as exceptions to the general rule, were thus active, the heat was not suf- 
ficient to induce their hybernating brethren to quit their retreats. Removy- 
ing some of the dead bark of an old apple-tree, I soon discovered several 
insects in their winter quarters. Of the little beetle Dromius quadri- 
notatus, | found six or eight individuals, and all so lively, that, though 
remaining perfectly quiet in their abode until disturbed, they ran about 
with their ordinary activity as soon as the covering of bark was displaced... 
The same was the case with a colony of earwigs. ‘Two or three indi- 
viduals of Drominus quadrimaculatus showed more torpidity. When 
first uncovered, their antenne were laid back; and it was only after the 
sun had shone some seconds upon them that they exhibited symptoms of 
animation, and, after stretching out these organs, began to walk. Close 
by them lay a single weevil (Anthonomus Pomorum), but in so deep a 
sleep that at first I thought it dead. It gave no sign of life when placed 
on my hand, quite hot with the exercise of digging; and it was only after 
being kept there some seconds, and breathed upon several times, that it 
first slowly unfolded its rostrum, and then its limbs. It deserves remark, 
that all these insects, thus differently affected, were on the same side of 
the tree, under a similar covering of bark, and apparently equally exposed 
to the sun, which shone full upon the covering of their retreat.* 

1 Spallanzani, Rapports de l Air, &c., i. 30. 2 Schmid in Illig. Mag. i. 222. 

3 Since writing the above, I have had another opportunity of confirming the observations 


here made. The last week of January 1817, in the neighborhood of Hall, was most deli- 
cous weather—calm, sunny, dry, and genial—the wind south-west, the thermometer from 


4 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 557 


All insects, however, do not undergo this degree of torpidity. In fact, 
there are some, though but few, which cannot, at least in our climate, 
strictly be said to hybernate, understanding by that term passing the win- 
ter in one selected situation in a greater or less degree of torpor, without 
food. Not to mention Chetmatobia brumata, and some other moths, which 
are disclosed from the pupz in the middle of winter, and can thereforeybe 
scarcely regarded as exceptions to the rule, some insects are torpid only 
in very severe weather, and on fine mild days in winter come out to eat. 
This is the case with the larva of Euprepia fuliginosa'; and Lyonet 
asserts that there are many other caterpillars which eat and grow ever in 
the midst of slight frost.2 Amongst perfect insects, troops of T'richocera 
hiemalis, the gnat whose choral dances have been before described, may 
be constantly seen gamboling in the air in the depth of winter when it is 
mild and calm, accompanied by the little Psychoda, so common in win- 
dows, several Muscidae, spiders, and occasionally some Aphodui and Staphy- 
linide : and the societies of ants, as well as their attendant Aphides, are 
in motion and take more or less food during the whole of that season, 
when the cold is not intense. The younger Huber informs us that ants 
become torpid only at 2° Reaum. below freezing (27° Fahrenheit), and 
apparently endeavor to preserve themselves from the cold, when its 
approach is gradual, by clustering together. When the temperature is 
above this point they follow their ordinary habits (he has seen them even 
walk upon the snow), and can then obtain the little food which they 
require in winter from their cows, the Aphides, which, by an admirable 
provision, become lethargic at precisely the same degree of cold as the 
ants, and awake at the same period with them.? Humboldt also found 
insects upon the Cordilleras, above the limits of snow, which, although 
not natives of this altitude, retained their vivacity at this low tempera- 
ture.* 

Lastly, there are some few insects which do not seem ever to be torpid, 
as Podura nivalis L., Boreus hiemalis Latr., and the singular apterous 
insect, first described by Dalman, Chionea araneoides®, all of which run 
with agility on the snow itself; and which last, both from its spider-like 
form and singular habitat, must, as Macquart has well observed®, have 
caused its fortunate discoverer as much astonishment as that felt by the 


47° to 52° every day, and at night rarely below 40°; in fact, a week much finer than we 

_can often boast of in May: the 27th of the month was the most delightful day of the whole: 
the air swarmed with Trichocera hiemalis, Psychod@, and numerous other Diptera, and the 
bushes were hung with the lines of the gossamer-spider as in autumn. Yet, with the 
exception of Aphodius contaminatus, I did not observe a single coleopterous insect on the 
wing, nor even an individual tempted to crawl on the trunks of the trees, under the dead 
bark of which I found many in a very lively state. Five or six individuals of Haltica 
Nemorum were still very lethargic; and two of Geotrupes stercorarius, which I accidentally 
dug up from their hybernacula in the earth, at the depth of six or eight inches, though the 
Acari upon them were quite alert, exhibited every symptom of complete torpor. 

1 Brahm, Jns. Kal. ii. 31. 2 Lesser, |. i. 255. 

3 Recherches, 202. In digging in my garden on the 26th of January, 1817, I turned up 
in three or four ‘places colonies of Myrmica rubra Latr. in their winter retreats, each®of 
which comprised apparently one or two hundred ants, with several larve as big as a grain 
of mustard, closely clustered together, occupying a cavity the size of a hen’s egg, in tena- 
cious clay, at the depth of six inches from the surface. They were very lively; but though 
Fahrenheit’s thermometer stood at 47° in the shade, I did not then, nor at any other time 
during the very mild winter, see a single ant out of its hybernaculum. 

4 Burmeister, Manual of Ent. 508. 

5 Kongl. Vet. Acad. Handling. 1816, 104. ® Dipteres, i. 74. 


47* 


558 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


botanist who first found the red-colored Protococgus nivalis (whatever 
may be decided as to its being a plant or an animalcule) in a siinilar situa- 
tion; or, as may be added, that of M. Lefebvre on first observing the 
Mantis (Eremiophila), mentioned in a former letter, living in an absolute 
solitude in the desert of Africa. 

The common hive-bee, too, is probably never, strictly speaking, torpid, 
though with regard to the precise state in which it passes the winter a 
considerable difference of opinion has obtained. 

Many authors have conceived that it is the most natural state of bees 
in winter to be perfectly torpid at a certain degree of cold, and that their 
partial reviviscency, and consequent need of food in our climate, are owing 
to its variableness and often comparative mildness in winter; whence they 
have advised placing bees during this season in an ice-house, or on the 
north side of a wall, where the degree of cold being more uniform, and 
thus their torpidity undisturbed, they imagine no food would be required. 
So far, however, do these suppositions and conclusions seem from being 
warranted, that Huber expressly affirms that, instead of being torpid in 
winter, the heat in a well-peopled hive continues+24° or 25° of Reau- 
mur (86° or 88° Fahrenheit), when it is several degrees below zero in the 
open air; that they then cluster together and keep themselves in motion 
in order to preserve their heat! ; and that in the depth of winter they do 
cease to ventilate the hive by the singular process of agitating their wings 
before described.2 He asserts also that, like Reaumur, he has in winter 
found in the combs brood of all ages; which, too, the observant Bonnet 
says he has witnessed’; and which is confirmed by Swammerdam, who 
expressly states that bees tend and feed their young even in the midst of 
winter. To all these weighty authorities may be added that of John 
Hunter, who, as before noticed, found a hive to grow lighter in a cold 
than in a warm week of winter; and that a hive from November 10th to 
February 9th lost more than four pounds in weight®; whence the conclu- 
sion seems inevitable, that bees do eat in winter. 

On the other hand, Reaumur adopts (or rather, perhaps, has in great 
measure given birth to) the more commonly received notion, that bees in 
a certain degree of cold are torpid and consume no food. These are his 
words :—* It has been established with a wisdom which we cannot but 
admire,—with that wisdom with which every thing in nature has been 
made and ordained,—that during the greater part of the time in which 
the country furnishes nothing to bees, they have no longer need to eat. 
The cold which arrests the vegetation of plants, which deprives our fields 
and meadows of their flowers, throws the bees into a state in which nour- 
ishment ceases to be necessary to them: it keeps them in a sort of tor- 
pidity (engourdissement), in which no transpiration from them takes place ; 
or, at least, during which the quantity of that which transpires is so incon- 
siderable that it cannot be restored by aliment without their lives being 
endangered. In winter, while it freezes, one may observe without fear 
the interior of hives that are not of glass; for we may lay them on their 
sides, and even turn them bottom upwards, without putting any bee into 
motion. We see the bees crowded and closely pressed one against the 


1 Huber, i. 134. 2 Ibid. ii. 344. 358. 2 Bonnet, On Bees, 104. 
4 Haber, i. 354. ® Phil. Trans. 1790, 161. 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 559 


‘ 


other: little space then suffices for them.’’! In another place, speaking 
of the custom in some countries of putting bee-hives during winter into 
out-houses and cellars, he says that in such situations the air, though more 
temperate than out of doors during the greater part of winter, “is yet 
sufficiently cold to keep the bees in that species of torpidity which does 
away their need of eating.”? And lastly, he expressly says that the 
milder the weather, the more risk there is of the bees consuming their 
honey before the spring, and dying of hunger ; and confirms his assertion 
by an account of a striking experiment, in which a hive that he trans- 
ferred during winter into his study, where the temperature was usually in 
the day 10° or 12° R. above freezing (54° or 59° F.), though provided 
with a plentiful supply of honey, that if they had been in a garden would 
have served them past the end of April, had consumed nearly their whole 
stock before the end of February.® 

Now, how are we to reconcile this contradiction ?—for, if Huber be 
correct in asserting that in frosty weather bees agitate themselves to keep 
off the cold, and ventilate their hive,—if, as both he and Swammerdam 
state, they feed their young brood in the depth of winter,—it seems 
impossible to admit that they ever can be in the torpid condition which 
Reaumur supposes, in which food, so far from being necessary, is injurious 
to them. In fact, Reaumur himself in another place informs us, that bees 
are so infinitely more sensible of cold than the generality of insects, that 
they perish when in numbers so small as to be unable to generate sufficient 
animal heat to counteract the external cold, even at 11° R. above freez- 
ing* (57° F.); which corresponds with what Huber has observed (as 
quoted above) of the high temperature of well-peopled hives, even in 
very severe weather. We are forced, then, to conclude that this usually 
most accurate of observers has in the present instance been led into error, 
chiefly, it is probable, from the clustering of bees in the hives in cold 
weather ; but which, instead of being, as he conceived, an indication of 
torpidity, would seem to be intended, as Huber asserts, as a preservative 
against the benumbing effects of cold. 

Bees, then, do not appear to pass the winter in a state of torpidity in 
our climates, and probably not in any others. Populous swarms inhabit- 
ing hives formed of the hollow trunks of trees, used in many northern regions, 
or of other materials that are bad conductors of heat, seem able to gene- 
rate and keep up a temperature sufficient to counteract the intensest cold 
to which they are ordinarily exposed. At the same time, however, I 
think we may infer, that though bees are not strictly torpid at that lowest 
degree of heat which they can sustain, yet that when exposed to that 
degree they consume considerably less food than at a higher temperature ; 
and consequently, that the plan of placing hives in a north aspect in 
sunny and mild winters may be adopted by the apiarist with advantage. 
John Hunter’s experiment, indeed, cited above, in which he found that a 
hive grew lighter in a cold than in a warm week, seems opposed to this 
conclusion; but an insulated observation of this kind, which we do not 
know to have been instituted with a due regard to all the circumstances 
that required attention, must not be allowed to set aside the striking facts 


pele SER allied AEE US..  s VPRO SE SES” 
1 Reaum. v. 667. 2 {bid. 682. 
3 Reaum. v. 668. 4 Ibid. 678. Compare also 673. 


560 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. . 


of a contrary description recorded by Reaumur andécorroborated by the 
almost universal sentiment of writers on bees. After all, however, on 
this point, as well as on many others connected with the winter economy 
of these endlessly-wonderful insects, there is evidently much yet to be 
observed, and many doubts which can be satisfactorily dispelled only by 
new experiments.’ ‘ 

The degree of cold which most insects in their different states, while 
torpid, are able to endure with impunity is very various ; and the habits 
of the different species, as to the situation which they select to pass the 
winter, are regulated by their greater or less sensibility in this respect. 
Many insects, though able to sustain a degree of cold sufficient to induce 
torpidity, would be destroyed by the freezing temperature, to avoid which 
they penetrate into the earth or hide themselves under non-conducting 
substances; and there can be little doubt that it is with this view that so 
many species while pup are thus secured from cold by cocoons of silk or 
other materials. Yet a very great proportion of insects, in all their states, 
are necessarily subjected to an extreme degree of cold. Many eggs and 
pupz are exposed to the air without any covering; and many, both larve 
and perfect insects, are sheltered too slightly to be secure from the frost. 
This they are able to resist, remaining unfrozen though exposed to the 
severest cold, or, which is still more surprising, are uninjured by its in- 
tensest action, recovering their vitality even after having been frozen into 
lumps of ice. ; 

The eggs of insects are filled with a fluid matter, included in a skin 
infinitely thinner than that of hens’ eggs, which John Hunter found to 
freeze at about 15° of Fahrenheit. Yet on exposing several of the for- 
mer, including those of the silk-worm, for five hours to a freezing mixture 
which made Fahrenheit’s thermometer fall to 38° below zero, Spallanzani 
found that they were not frozen, nor their fertility in the slightest degree 


1 Mr. Newport, from his numerous experiments on the temperature of the interior of bee- 
hives in winter, recorded in his valuable paper in the Philosophical Transactions, ‘ On the 
Temperature of Insects,’ has come to the conclusion that Huber is altogether in error in 
assigning a heat of 86° or 88° Fahr. to a populous hive, which, he contends, has its tempe- 
rature sometimes (though rarely) lower than that of the freezing point (p. 3U3.), and in the 
winter months does not average more than from 7 to 9 degrees above that of the atmos- 
phere, or about 52° (Table XVI. p. 335.), though merely tapping on the outside of the hive, 
by exciting the bees, will, at any time, greatly increase the heat; in one instance (Feb. 2.) 
to 102°, when the temperature of an adjoining hive was only 48°-5 (p. 304.); and it is 
from this circumstance that he supposes Huber’s error to have arisen, as the mere excite- 
ment caused by introducing a thermometer is sufficient to raise the heat to the point (86° 
or 88°) which that observer mentions. Mr. Newport admits that hive-bees are never strictly 
torpid, but pass the winter in a state of hybernating sleep, liable to constant interruption by 
considerable external variations of temperature or accidental excitement (p. 300.) — Without 
entering on a discussion which would require much greater space than can here be given, 
it may be remarked that something more than thermometrical observations seems required, 
before the express assertions, as above quoted, of such careful observers as Swammerdam 
and Bonnet—that bees feed and tend their young even in the midst of winter, and those of 
Huber, that bees then cluster together and keep themselves in motion in order to preserve 
their heat, that they do not cease to ventilate the hive, and, on an emergency, set themselves 
to work in the middle ot January—can be put aside as wholly unfounded. It may be true 
that Huber was deceived as to the actual thermometrical heat of the interior of his hive, 
yet the results of Mr. Newport’s own observations show that bees preserve their activity, 
and even leave the hive and collect pollen, when the external temperature is 40°°38, and 
that of the hive only 47°-28 (Table XVI. Nov. 6), and they may, consequently, feed their 
brood, and attend to the usual interior occupations of the hive, at a temperature not lower 
than this, to which lower temperature it does not appear likely, from Mr. Newport’s obser- 
vations, the interior of their hives often descends in our winters. 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 561 


impaired. Others were exposed even to 56° below zero, without being 
injured.! 

A less degree of cold suffices to freeze many pupz and larve, in both 
which states the consistency of the animal is almost as fluid as that of 
the egg. ‘Their vitality enables them to resist it to a certain extent, and 
it must be considerably below the freezing point to affect them. The 
winter of 1813-14 was one of the severest we had had for many years, 
Fahrenheit’s thermometer having been more than once as low as 8° when 
the ground was wholly free from snow ; yet almost the first objects which 
I observed in my garden, in the commencement of spring, were numbers 
of the caterpillars of the gooseberry-moth (Abraxas grossulariata), which, 
though they had passed the winter with no other shelter than the slightly 
projecting rim of some large garden-pots, were alive and quite uninjured ; 
and these and many other larve never in my recollection were so numerous 
and destructive as in that spring: whence, as well as from the correspond- 
ing fact recorded, with surprise, by Boerhaave, that insects abounded as much 
after the intense winter of 1709, during which Fahrenheit’s thermometer 
fell to 0°, as after the mildest season, we may see the fallacy of the pop- 
ular notion, that hard winters are destructive to insects.! 

But though many larve and pupe are able to resist a great degree of 
cold, when it increases to a certain extent, they yield to its intensity and 
become solid masses of ice. In this state we should think it impossible 
that they should ever revive. ‘That an animal whose juices, muscles, and 
whole body have been subjected to a process which splits bombshells, and 
converted into an icy mass that may be snapped asunder like a piece of 
glass, should ever recover its vital powers, seems at first view little less 
than a miracle; and, if the reviviscency of the wheel animal (Rotifer 
vulgaris) and of snails, &c., after years of desiccation, had not made us 
familiar with similar prodigies, might have been pronounced impossible ; 
and it is probable that many insects when thus frozen never do revive. 
Of the fact, however, as to several species, there is no doubt. It was first 
noticed by Lister, who relates that he had found caterpillars so frozen, 
that when dropped into a glass they chinked like stones, which neverthe- 
less revived.?, Reaumur, indeed, repeated this experiment without success ; 
and found that when the larve of Cnethocampa Pityocampa were frozen 
into ice by a cold of 15° R. below zero (2° F’. below zero), they could 
not be made to revive.4 But other trials have fully confirmed Lister’s 
observations. My friend Mr. Stickney, before mentioned as the author of 
a valuable Essay on the Grub (larva of Tipula oleracea)—to ascertain 
the effect of cold in destroying this insect, exposed some of them toa 
severe frost, which congealed them into perfect masses of ice. When 
broken, their whole interior was found to be frozen. Yet several of these 
resumed their active powers. Bonnet had precisely the same result with 
the pupe of Pontia Brassica, which, by exposing toa frost of 14° R. 
below zero (0° F.), became lumps of ice, and yet produced butterflies? ; 
and in an experiment made during Sir John Ross’s voyage on the cater- 
pillars of a moth (Laria Rossii) two of them revived, and one assumed 


1 Tracts, 22. 


m eee Spence in Transactions of the Horticult. Soc. of London, ii. 148. Compare Reaum. 
ii. ; 
3 Lister, Goedart, De Insectis, 76. 4 Reaum. ii. 142. 5 Quvres, vi. 12. 


562 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


the imago state, after being four times in succession exposed to a cold of 
40° below zero, and four times revivified by being brought into the warin 
atmosphere of the cabin. Indeed, the circumstance that animals of a 
much more complex organization chan insects, namely, serpents and fishes, 
have been known to revive after being frozen, is sufficient to dispel any 
doubts on this head. John Hunter, though himself unsuccessful in his 
attempts to regnimate carp and other animals that had been frozen, confesses 
that the fact itself is so well authenticated as to admit of no question.’ 

On what principle a faculty so extraordinary and so contrary to our 
common conceptions of the nature of animal life depends, I shall not 
attempt to explain. Nor can any thing very satisfactory be advanced with 
regard to the source of the power which many insects in some states, and 
almost all in the egg state, have of resisting intense degrees of cold with- 
out becoming frozen. It is clear that the usual explanation of the same 
faculty to a less degree in the warm-blooded animals—the constant pro- 
duction of animal heat from the caloric set free in the decomposition of 
the respired air—will not avail us here. For, many large larve, as 
Reaumur has observed, are destroyed by a less degree of cold than smaller 
species whose respiratory organization is necessarily on a much less exten- 
sive scale; and the eggs of insects, in which, though they probably are in 
some degree acted upon by the oxygen of the atmosphere, nothing like 
respiration takes place, can endure a much greater intensity of cold than 
either the larve or pupe produced from them. 

Nor can we refer the effect in question to the thinness or thickness— 
the greater or less non-conducting power—of the skin of the animal. 
Reaumur found that the subterranean pupe of many moths perished 
with a cold of 7° or 8° R. below zero (14° F.), while the exposed pupe 
of Pontia Brassice and other species endured 15° or 16° without injury? ; 
(a proof, by the way, that the different*economy of these insects, as to 
their choice of a situation in their state of pupa, is regulated by their power 
of resisting cold;) but no difference in the substance of the exterior 
skin is perceptible. And the eggs of insects have usually thinner skins than 
pupe, and yet they are unaffected by a degree of cold much superior. 

In the present state, then, of our knowledge of animal physiology, we 
must confess our ignorance of the cause of these phenomena, which 
seem never to have been sufficiently adverted to by general speculators 
on the nature of animal heat. We may conjecture, indeed, either that 
they are owing to some peculiar and varying attraction for caloric inhe- 
rent in the fluids which compose the animal, and which in the egg state, 
like spirit of wine, resist our utmost producible artificial cold; or that, as 
John Hunter seems to infer, with respect to a similar faculty in a minor 
degree in the hen’s egg, the whole are to be referred to some unknown 
power of vitality. The latter seems the most probable supposition ; for 
Spallanzani found that the blood of marmots, which remains fluid when they 
are exposed to a cold several degrees below zero of Fahrenheit, freezes 
at a much higher temperature when drawn from the animal®; and it is rea- 
sonable to conjecture that the same result would follow if the fluids filling 
the eggs of insects were collected, separately, and then exposed to severecold. 


1 Observations on the Animal Economy, 99. 
® Reaum. ii. 146—. 3 Rapports de V Air, &c. ii. 215. 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 563 


Spring is, of course, the period when insects shake off the four or five 
months’ sleep which has sweetly banished winter from their calendar, 
quit their dormitories, and again enter the active scenes of life. It is 
impossible to deny that the increased temperature of this season is the 
immediate cause of their reappearance ; for they leave their retreats much 
earlier in forward than in backward springs. Thus in the early spring 
of 1805 (to me a memorable one, since in it I began my entomological 
career, and had anxiously watched its first approaches in order to study 
practically the science of which I had gained some theoretical knowledge 
in the winter) insects were generally out by the middle of March; and 
before the 30th, I find, on referring to my entomological journal, that I 
had taken and investigated (Iscarcely need add, not always with a correct 
result) fifty-eight coleopterous species ; while in the untoward spring of 
1816 I did not observe even a bee abroad until the 20th of April; and 
the first butterfly that I saw did not appear until the 26th. 

There are, however, circumstances connected with this reappearance, 
which seem to prove that something more than the mere sensation of 
warmth is concerned in causing it. I shall not insist upon the remarkable 
fact which Spallanzani has noticed, that insects reappear in spring at a 
temperature considerably lower than that at which they retired in autumn ; 
because it may be plausibly enough explained by reference to their 
increased irritability in spring, the result of so long an abstinence from 
food, and their consequent augmented sensibility to the stimulus of heat. 
But if the mere perception of warmth were the sole cause of insects 
ceasing to hybernate, then we might fairly infer, that species of apparently 
similar organization, and placed in similar circumstances, would leave 
their winter quarters at the same time. This, however, is far from being 
the case. Reaumur observed that the larve of Melitea Cinzia quitted 
their nest a full month sooner than those of Porthesia chrysorrhea.' 
The reason is obvious; but cannot be referred to mere sensation. The 
former live on grass and on the leaves of plantain, which they can meet 
with at the beginning of March—the period of their appearance; the 
latter eat only the leaves of trees which expand a month later. It might, 
indeed, be still contended, that this fact is susceptible of explanation by 
supposing that the organization of these two species of larva, though appa- 
rently similar, is yet in fact different, that of the one being constituted so 
as to be acted upon by a less degree of heat than that of the other; and 
this solution would be satisfactory if the torpidity of these larve were 
uninterrupted up to the very period at which they quit their nest. But 
facts do not warrant any such supposition. You have seen that the 
temperature of a mild day, even in winter, awakens many insects from 
their torpidity, though without inducing them to leave their hybernacula ; 
and it is therefore highly improbable that the larve of P. chrysorrhea 
should not often have their torpid state relaxed during the month of 
March, when we have almost constantly occasional bright days elevating 
the thermometer to above 50°. Yetas they still do not, like the larve of 
M. Cinzia, leave their nest, it seems obvious that something more than 
the sensation of heat is the regulator of the movements of each. Not, 
however, to detain you here unnecessarily, I shall not enlarge on this 


1 Reaum. ii. 170. 


564 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


point, but shall pass on, in concluding this letter,#o advert to the causes 
which have been assigned for the bybernation and torpidity of animals, and 
to state my own ideas on the subject, which will equally apply to the 
termination of this condition in spring. 

The authors who have treated on these phenomena have generally! 
referred them to the operation of cold upon the animals in which they 
are witnessed, but acting in a different manner. Some conceive that cold, 
combined with a degree of fatness arising from abundance of food in 
autumn, produces in them an agreeable sensation of drowsiness, such as 
we know, from the experience of Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander 
in Terra del Fuego, as well as from other facts, is felt by man when 
exposed to a very low temperature; yielding to which, torpidity ensues. 
Others, admitting that cold is the cause of torpidity, maintain that 
the sensations which precede it are of a painful nature; and that the 
retreats in which hybernating animals pass the winter are selected in conse- 
quence of their endeavors to escape from the disagreeable influence of cold. 

I have before had occasion to remark the inconclusiveness of many of 
the physiological speculations of very eminent philosophers, arising from 
their ignorance of Entomology, which observation forcibly applies in the 
present instance. ‘The reasoners upon torpidity have almost all confined 
their view to the hybernating quadrupeds, as the marmot, dormouse, 
&c., and have thus lost sight of the far more extensive series of facts 
supplied by hybernating insects, which would often at once have set 
aside their most confidently-asserted hypotheses. If those who adopt the 
former of the opinions above alluded to had been aware that numerous 
insects retire to their hybernacula (as has been before observed) on 
some of the finest days at the close of autumn, they could never have 
contended that this movement, in which insects display extraordinary 
activity, is caused by the agreeable drowsiness consequent on severe cold ; 
and the very same fact is equally conclusive against the theory that it is 
to escape the pain arising from a low temperature that insects bury them- 
selves in their winter quarters. 

In fact, the great source of the confused and unsatisfactory reasoning 
which has obtained on this subject is, that no author, as far as my know- 
ledge extends, has kept steadily in view, or indeed has distinctly per- 
ceived, the difference between torpidity and hybernation; or, in other 
words, between the sfate in which animals pass the winter, and their 
selection of a situation in which they may become subject to that state. 

That the torpidity of insects, as well as of other hybernating animals, 
is, with us, caused by cold, is unquestionable. However early the period 
at which a beetle, for example, takes up its winter quarters, it does not 
suffer that cessation of the powers of active life which we understand by 
torpidity, until a certain degree of cold has been experienced ; the degree 
of its torpidity varies with the variations of temperature ; and there can 
be no doubt that, if it were kept during winter from the influence of cold, 
it would not become torpid at all—at least this has proved the fact with 


_ } Here must be excepted my lamented friend the late Dr. Reeve of Norwich, who, in his 
ingenious Essay on the Torpidity of Animals, has come to nearly the same conclusion as is 
adopted in this letter; but, by omitting to make a distinction between torpidity and hyber- 
nation, he has not done justice to his own ideas, 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 565 


marmots and dormice thus treated ; and the Aphis of the rose (A. Rose), 
which becomes torpid in winter in the open air’, retains its activity, and 
gives birth to a numerous progeny, upon rose trees preserved in green- 
houses and warm apartments. 

But can we, in the same way, regard mere cold as the cause of hyber- 
nation of insects? Is it wholly owing to this agent, as most writers seem _. 
to think—to feelings either of a pleasurable or painful nature produced by 
it—that, previously to becoming torpid, they select or fabricate commodi- 
ous retreats precisely adapted to the constitution and wants of different 
species, in which they quietly wait the accession of torpidity and pass the 
winter? In my opinion, certainly not. 

In the first place, if sensations proceeding from cold lead insects to 

select retreats for hybernating, how comes it that, as above shown, a large 
proportion of them enter these retreats before any severe cold has been 
felt, and on days considerably warmer than many that preceded them? 
If this supposition have any meaning, it must imply that insects are so 
constituted that, when a certain degree of cold has been felt by them, the 
sensations which this feeling excites impel them to seek out hybernacula. 
Now the thermometer in the shade on the 14th of October, 1816, when 
I observed vast numbers thus employed, was at 58° :—this, then, on the 
theory in question, is a temperature sufficiently low to induce the requisite 
sensations. But it so happens, as I learn from my meteorological journal 
(which registers the greatest and least daily temperature as indicated by a 
Six’s thermometer), that on the 31st of August, 1816, the greatest heat 
was not more than 52°, or six degrees lower than on the 14th of October: 
yet it was six weeks later that insects retired for the winter ! 
- But it may be objected, that it is perhaps not so much the precise 
degree of cold prevailing on the day when insects select their hybernacula, 
that regulates their movements, as the lower degree which may have 
obtained for a few nights previously, and which may act upon their deli- 
cate organization so as to influence their future proceedings. Facts, how- 
ever, are again in direct opposition to the explanation; for I find that, for 
a week previously to the 14th of October, 1816, the thermometer was 
never lower at night than 48°, while in the first week in August it was 
twice as low as 46°, and never higher than 50°.* 

As a last resource, the advocates of the doctrine I am opposing may 
urge, that possibly insects may even have their sensations affected by the 
cold some days before it comes on, in the same way as we know that 
spiders and some other animals are influenced by changes of weather 
previously to their actual occurrence. But once more I refer to my mete- 


1 Kyber, in Germar’s Mag. der Ent. ii. 3. 

2 Since the publication of the first edition of this volume, I have had an opportunity of 
making some observaiions which strongly corroborate the above reasoning. The month of 
October in the year {817 set in extremely cold. From the first to the 6th, piercing north 
and north-west winds blew; the thermometer at Hull, though the sun shone brightly in the 
day-time, was never higher than from 52° to 56%, nor at night than 38°; in fact, on the 
{st and 3d it sunk as low as 31°, and on the 2. to 319%: and on those days, at eight in the 
morning, the grass was covered with a white hoar frost; in short, to every one’s feelings 
the weather indicated December rather than October. Here, then, was every condition ful- 
filled that the theory I am opposing can reqnire ; consequently, according to that theory, | 
such a state of the aimosphere shoulil have driven every hybernating insect to its winter 
quarters. Bat so far was this from being the case, that an the oth. when J made an excur- 
sion purposely to ascertain the fact. I found all the insects sull abroad which | had met 
with six weeks before in similar situations. 


48 


566 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 


orological journal ; and I find that the average lowést height of the ther- 
mometer, in the week comprising the latter end of October and beginning 
of November, 1816, was 43!°; while in the week comprising the same 
days of the month of the end of August and beginning of September it was 
only 44:°—a difference surely too inconsiderable to build a theory upon. 

I have entered into this tedious detail, because it is of importance to 
the spirit of true philosophizing to show what little agreement there often 
is between facts and many of the hypotheses which authors of the present 
day are, from their determination to explain every thing, led to promulgate. 
But in truth there was no absolute need for imposing this fatigue upon 
your attention ; for the single notorious consideration that in this climate, 
as well as in more southern ones, we not unfrequently have sharp night- 
frosts in summer, and colder weather at that season than in the latter end 
of autumn and beginning of winter, and yet that insects do hybernate at 
the latter period, but do not at the former, is an ample refutation of the 
notion that mere cold is the cause of the phenomenon. If, indeed, the 
hybernacula of insects were simply the underside of any dead leaf, clod, 
or stone that chanced to be in the neighborhood of their abode, it might 
still be contended, that such situations were always resorted to by them on 
the occurrence of a certain degree of cold, but that they remained in them 
only when its continuance had induced torpidity ; and it seems to have 
been in this view that most reasoners on this subject have regarded the 
hybernation of the larger animals, to which they have exclusively directed 
their attention. But had they been acquainted (as surely the investigators 
of such a question ought to have been) with the economy of the class of 
insects, in which not merely a few species, as among quadrupeds, but one 
half or three fourths of the whole, in our climates, hybernate, they would 
have known that their hybernacula are in general totally distinct from their 
ordinary retreats in casual cold weather; and that many of them even 
fabricate habitations requiring considerable time and Jabor, expressly for 
the purpose of their winter residence—which last fact in particular, on 
their theory, admits of no satisfactory explanation. We may say, and 
truly, that the sensation of fatigue causes man to lie down and sleep; but 
we should laugh at any one who contended that this sensation forced him 
first to make a four-post bedstead to repose upon. 

In the second place, if we grant for a moment that it is cold which 
drives insects to their hybernacula, there are other phenomena attending 
the state of hybernation, which, on this supposition, are inexplicable. If 
cold led insects to enter their winter quarters, then they ought to be led 
by the cessation of cold to quit them. But, as has been before observed, 
we have often days in winter milder than at the period of hybernating, 
and in which insects are so roused from their torpidity as to run about 
nimbly when molested in their retreats ; yet, though their irritability must 
have been increased by a two or three months’ inactivity and abstinence, 
they do not leave them, but quietly remain until a fresh accession of cold 
again induces insensibility. 

In short, to refer the hybernation of insects to the mere direct influence 
of cold is to suppose one of the most important acts of their existence 
given up to the blind guidance of feelings which in the variable climates 
of Europe would be leading them into perpetual and fatal errors—which 


HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 567 


in spring would be inducing them to quit their ordinary occupations, and 
prepare retreats and habitations for winter to be quitted again as soon asa 
few fine days had dispélled the frosty feel of a May week; and in a mild 
winter’s day, when the thermometer, as is often the case, rises to 50° or 
55°, would lure them to an exposure that must destroy them. It is not, 
we may rest assured, to such a deceptious guide that the Creator has 
intrusted the safety of so important a part of his creatures: their destinies 
are regulated by feelings far less liable to err. 

‘What, you will ask, is this regulator? I answer, Instinct—that faculty 
to which so many other of the equally surprising actions of insects are to 
be referred ; and which alone can adequately account for the phenomena 
to be explained. Why, indeed, should we think it necessary to go further? 
We are content to refer to instinct the retirement of insects into the earth 
previously to becoming pupe, and the cocoons which they then fabricate ; 
and why should we not attribute to the same energy their retreat into 
appropriate hybernacula, and the construction by many species of habita- 
tions expressly destined for their winter residence? The cases are exactly 
analogous; and the insect knows no more that its hybernaculum is to 
protect it from too severe a degree of cold during winter than does the 
fuil-fed caterpillar when it enters the earth that it shall emerge a beau- 
teous moth.! I am, &c. 


1 The reasoning in the preceding pages, as to cold not being the sole and direct cause of 
hybernation in insects, is strongly confirmed by the facts observed with regard to the hyber- 
nation of snails by M. Gaspard; who found that he could not bring on this state of existence 
out of its proper season by submitting them to artificial cold nearly to the freezing point, 
while he ascertained that at the proper period they prepare for hybernating at very different 
degrees of temperature, varying from 37° to 77° Fahr. (Zoological Journ. i. 93.) If it be 
said that some change in the sensations of insects, either from an internal or external cause, 
must probably exist, in order to lead them to adopt a state so different from that of their 
usual habits.as hybernation, this is readily admitted ; but what is contended in the preceding 
letter is, that these causes are not simply cold, and that we are as yet ignorant of their 
nature. Dr. Jenner has argued (Phil. Trans. 1823) that it is not cold, but the tumid state 
of the testes and ovaria in swallows, and other migratory birds, which is the proximate cause 
of their leaving us at the approach of winter; and some analogous, though different, inter- 
nal change may have a share in causing insects to exercise their hybernating instinct; but 
this change remains to be ascertained. Mr. Newport’s idea that it is caused by an accu- 
mulation of fat pressing upon the trachee, and thus inducing a plethoric condition of body, 
and consequent inclination to sleep, might explain why insects become torpid after entering 
their winter quarters; but not distinguishing, as it appears to me, the two very distinct 
actions of seeking out for and preparing hybernacula, and becoming torpid after entering 
them, it leaves, as the theories of other physiologists have done, the former, which -is so 
essential a peculiarity of hybernation, wholly unexplained: just as Dr. Jenner’s hypothesis, 
though it may explain why swallows should be uneasy and desirous of changing their 
abode, throws no light on that mysterious faculty by which they are directed, with unerring 
certainty, through the trackless air to the very spots, perhaps a thousand miles distant, that 
suit their new corporeal sensations. An accumulation of fat, supposing it to exist, may 
induce drowsiness and torpor, whether in cold climates like ours, in winter, or in tropical 
regions, where insects, as well as lizards, and even crocodiles, &c., retire under ground, and 
sleep during the excessive heat; and there is obviously no natural connection between this 
plethoric state and the act of seeking out and preparing and retiring toa suitable dormitory. 
If fat and plethora are sufficient to induce this propensity, why do not these conditions, 
which are constantly taking place in many European carnivorous perfect insects in summer, 
when their food is abundant, lead them then, in Europe as in tropical countries, to seek out 
or prepare a suitable retreat? Yet, however full fed insects in temperate climes may be in 
summer, we know that they do not retire to become torpid at that period. All, therefore, 
that the present state of our knowledge seems to entitle us to say, is, as expressed in the 
close of the above letter, written thirty years ago, that the act of hybernation is dependant 
on the instinet of the insect, and that thongh this instinct may be, and probably is, excited 
by some bodily sensation, we as yet know no more of the precise nature of this than of 
that of a thousand other sensations which may give rise to the endless instincts of different 
kinds observed in the insect tribes. 


568 


LETTER XXVII. 
ON THE INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


Tue greater part of those surprising facts connected with the manners and 
economy of insects, of which the relation has occupied the preceding 
letters, is to be referred, I have told you, to their instinct. But what, you 
will ask, is this instinct ?—of what nature is this faculty which produces 
effects so extraordinary ? 

To this query I do not pretend to give any satisfactory answer. As I 
am quite of Bonnet’s opinion, that philosophers will in vain torment them- 
selves to define instinct, until they have spent some time in the head of an 
animal without actually being that animal—a species of metempsychosis 
through which I have never passed—I shall not attempt to explain what 
this mysterious energy zs. It will not, however, I imagine, be very difficult 
to show what it is no¢; and some observations with this view, followed by 
an enumeration of peculiarities which distinguish the instincts of insects 
from those of other tribes of animals, and a short inquiry whether their 
actions are guided solely by instinct, will form the substance of this letter. 

I. It is quite superfluous at this day to controvert the explanations of 
instinct advanced by some of the philosophers of the old school, such as 
that of Cudworth, who referred this faculty to a certain plastic nature ; or 
that of Des Cartes, who contended that animals are mere machines. Nor, 
I fancy, would you thank me for entering into an elaborate refutation of 
the doctrine of Mylius, that many of the actions deemed instinctive are 
the effect of painful corporeal feelings; the cocoon of a caterpillar, for 
instance, being the result of a fit of the colic, produced by a superabundance 
of the gum which fills its silk-bags, and which exuding is twisted round it 
by its uneasy contortions into a regular ball. Still less need I advert to 
the notable discovery of some pupils of Professor Winckler, that the brain, 
alias the soul, of a bee or spider is impressed at the birth of the insect with 
certain geometrical figures, according to which models its works are con- 
structed—a position which these gentlemen demonstrate very satisfactorily 
by a memorable experiment in which they themselves were able to hear 
triangles. 

It is as unnecessary to waste any words in refutation of the nonsense 
(for it deserves no better name) of Buffon, who refers the instinct of socie- 
ties of insects to the circumstance of a great number of individuals being 
brought into existence at the same time, all acting with equal force, and 
obliged by the similarity of their internal and external structure, and the 
conformity of their movements, to perform each the same actions, in the 
same place, in the most convenient mode for themselves, and least incon- 
venient for their companions ; whence results a regular, well-proportioned, 
and symmetrical structure: and he gravely tells us that the boasted hex~ 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 569 


agonal cells of bees are produced by the reciprocal pressure of the cylin- 
drical bodies of these insects against each other! !* 

Nor is it requisite to advert.at length to the explanations of instinctive 
actions more recently given by Steffens, a German author (one of the 
trancendentalists, I conclude, from the incomprehensibility of his booksto 
my ordinary intellect), who says that the products of the vaunted instinct 
of insects are nothing but ‘ shootings out of inorganic animal masses’ 
(anorgische anschiisse)? ; ; and by Lamarck’, who attributes them to certain 
inherent inclinations arising from habits impressed upon the organs of the 
animals concerned in producing them, by the constant efflux towards these 
organs of the nervous fluid, which, during a series of ages, has been dis- 
placed in their endeavors to perform certain actions which their necessities 
have given birth to. The mere statement of a hypothesis of which the 
enunciation is nearly unintelligible, and built upon the assumption of the 
presence of an unseen fluid, and of the existence of the animal some 
millions of years, is quite sufficient, and would even be-unnecessary if it 
were not of such late origin. Neither shall I detain you with any formal 
consideration of the hypothesis advanced by Addison and some other 
authors, that instinct is an immediate and constant impulse of the Deity ; 
which, to omit other obvious objections, is sufficiently refuted by the fact, 
that siuiitealé'i in their instincts are sometimes at fault, and commit mistakes, 
which on the above supposition could not in any case happen. 

The only doctrine on the subject of instinct requiring any thing like a 
formal refutation is that which, contending for the identity of this faculty 
with reason in man, maintains that all the actions of animals, however 
complicated, are, like those of the human race, the result of observation, 
invention, and experience. This theory, maintained by the sceptics, 
Pythagoras, Plato, and some other ancient philésophers, and in modern 
times by Helvetius, Condillac, and Smellie, has been by none more inge- 
niously supported than by Dr. Darwin, who in the chapter treating on 
instinct, in the first volume of his Zoonomia, has brought forward a collec- 
tion of facts which give it a great air of plausibility. This plausibility, 
however, is merely superficial; and the result of a rigorous examination 
by any competent judge is, that the greater part of Dr. Darwin’s facts 
bear more strongly in favor of the dissimilarity of instinct and reason than 
of their identity : and that those few which seem to support the latter 
position are built upon the relations of persons ignorant of natural history, 
who have confused together distinct species of animals. Thus, because 
some anonymous informant told him that hive-bees when transported to 
Barbadoes, where there is no winter, ceased to lay up a store of honey, 
Dr. Darwin infers that all the operations of these insects are guided by 
reason and the adaptation of means to an end—a very just inference, if the 
statement from which it is drawn were accurate; but that it is not so is 
known to every naturalist acquainted with the fact that many different 


1 Hist. Nat. Edit. 1785, v. 277. 

* Beitrage zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde, 1801, p. 298. 

3 In his ‘Philosophie Zoologique, Paris, 1809 (ii. 325. ja work which every zoologist will, 
I think, join with me in regretting should be devoted to metaphysical disquisitions | built on 
the most gratuitous assumptions, instead of comprising that luminous generalization. of 
facts relative to the animal world which is so great a desideratum, and for performing which 
satisfactorily this eminent naturalist is so well qualified. 


49* 


570 : INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


_ 


species of bees store up honey in the hottest climatés ; and that there is 
no authentic instance on record of the hive-bees’ altering, in any age or 
climate, their peculiar operations, which are now in the coldest and in the 
hottest regions precisely what they were in Greece in the time of Aristotle, 
and in Italy in the days of Virgil. Indeed the single fact, depending on 
the assertions of such accurate observers as Reaumur and Swammerdam, 
that a bee as soon after it is disclosed from the pupa as its body is dried 
and its wings expanded, and before it is possible that it should have 
received any instruction, betakes itself to the collecting of honey or the 
fabrication of a cell, which operation it performs as adroitly as the most 
hoary inhabitant of the hive, is alone sufficient to set aside all the hearsay 
statements of Dr. Darwin, and should have led him, as it must every logi- 
cal reasoner, to the conclusion, that these and similar actions of animals 
cannot be referred to any reasoning process, nor be deemed the result of 
observation and experience. It is true, it does not follow that animals, 
besides instinct, have not, in a degree, the faculty of reason also; and, as 
I shall in the sequel endeavor to show, many of the actions of insects can 
be adequately explained on no other supposition. But to deny, as Dr. 
Darwin does, that the art with which the caterpillar weaves its cocoon, or 
the unerring care with which the moth places her eggs upon food that she 
herself can never use, are the effect of instinct, is as unphilosophical and 
contrary to fact as to insist that the eagerness with which, though it has 
never tasted milk, the infant seeks for its mother’s breast, is the effect of 
reason. 

Instinct, then, is not the result of a plastic nature; of a system of 
machinery ; of diseased bodily action ; of models impressed on the brain ; 
nor of organic shootings-out :—it is not the effect of the habitual deter- 
mination for ages of the‘nervous fluid to certain organs; nor is it either 
the impulse of the Deity, or reason. Without pretending to give a logi- 
cal definition of it, which, while we are ignorant of the essence of reason, 
is impossible, we may call the instincts of animals those unknown facul- 
ties implanted in their constitution by the Creator, by which, independent 
of instruction, observation, or experience, and without a knowledge of 
the end in view, they are impelled to the performance of certain actions 
tending to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the 
species: and with this description, which is, in fact, merely a confession 
of ignorance, we must, in the present state of metaphysical science, con- 
tent ourselves. 

I here say nothing of that supposed connection of the instinct of 
animals with their sensations, which has been introduced into many defini- 
tions of this mysterious power, for two reasons. In the first place, this 
definition merely sets the world upon the tortoise ; for what do we know 
more than before about the nature of instinct, when we have called it, 
with Brown, a predisposition to certain actions when certain sensations 
exist, or with Tucker have ascribed it to the operation of the senses, or 
to that internal feeling called appetite? But, secondly, this connection 
of instinct with bodily sensation, though probable enough in some instances, 
is by no means generally evident. We may explain in this way the 
instincts connected with hunger and the sexual passion, and some other 
particular facts, as the laying of the eggs of the flesh-fly in the flowers of 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 5TI 


Stapelia hirsuta, instead of in carrion, their proper nidus, and of those of 
the common house-fly in snuff! instead of dung; for in these instances 
the smell seems so clearly the guide, that it even leads into error.. But 
what connection between sensation and instinct do we see in the conduct 
of the working-bees, which fabricate some of the cells in a comb larger 
than others, expressly to contain the eggs and future grubs of drones, 
though these eggs are not laid by themselves, and are still in the ovaries 
of the queen? So we may plausibly enough conjecture that the fury 
with which, in ordinary circumstances, at a certain period of the year, 
the working-bees are inspired towards the drones, is the effect of some 
disagreeable smell or emanation proceeding from them at that particular 
time: but how can we explain, on similar grounds, the fact that in a hive 
deprived of a queen, no massacre of the drones takes place? Lastly, to 
omit here a hundred other instances, as many of them will be subse- 
quently adverted to, if we may with some show of reason suppose that 
it is the sensation of heat which causes bees to swarm ; yet what possible 
conception can we form of its being bodily sensations that lead bees to 
send out scouts in search of a hive suitable for the new colony several 
days before swarming ? 

After these observations on the nature of instinct, generally, I pass on 
to contrast in several particulars the instincts of insects with those of other 
animals ; and thus to bring together some remarkable instances of the 
former which have not hitherto been laid before you, as well as to deduce 
from some of those already related inferences to which it did not fall in 
with my design before to direct your attention. This contrast may be 
conveniently made under the three heads of the exquisiteness of their 
instincts, their number, and their extraordinary development. 

The instincts of by far the majority of the superior animals are of a 
very simple kind, only directing them to select suitable food ; to propa- 
gate their species ; to defend themselves and their young from harm; to 
express their sensations by various vocal modulations ; and to a few other 
actions which need not: be particularized. Others of the larger animals, 
in addition to these simpler instinctive propensities, are gifted with more 
extensive powers; storing up food for their winter consumption, and 
building nests or habitations for their young, which they carefully feed 
and tend. 

All these instincts are common to insects, a great proportion of which 
are in like manner confined to these. But a very considerable number of 
this class are endowed with instincts of an exguisiteness to which the 
higher animals can lay no claim. What bird or fish, for example, catches 
its prey by means of nets as artfully woven and as admirably adapted to 
their purposes as any that ever fisherman or fowler fabricated? Yet such 
nets are constructed by the race of spiders. What beast of prey thinks 
of digging a pitfall in the track of the animals which serve it for food, 
and at the bottom of which it conceals itself, patiently waiting until some 
unhappy victim is precipitated down the sides of its cavern? Yet this is 


1 Dr. Zinken genannt Sommer says, that if in August and September a snuff-box be left 
open, it will be seen to be frequented by the common house-fly (Musca domestica), the eggs 
of which will be found to have been deposited amongst the snuff. Germar, Mag. der Ent. 
I. ii, 189. 


572 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


done by the ant-lion and another insect. Or, to omif'the endless instances 
furnished by wasps, ants, the Termites, &c., what animals can be adduced 
which, like the hive-bee, associating in societies, build regular cities com- 
posed of cells formed with geometrical precision, divided into dwellings 
adapted in capacity to different orders of the society, and storehouses for 
containing a supply of provision? Even the erections of the beaver, and 
the pensile dwelling of the tailor-bird, must be referred to a less elaborate 
instinct than that which guides the procedures of these little insects, the 
complexness and yet perfection of whose operations, when contrasted with 
the insignificance of the architect, have at all times caused the reflecting 
observer to be lost in astonishment. 

It is, however, in the deviations of the instincts of insects, and their 
accommodation to circumstances, that the exquisiteness of these faculties 
is most decidedly manifested. The instincts of the larger animals seem 
capable of but slight modification. They are’either exercised in their full 
extent or not at all. A bird when its nest is pulled out of a bush, though 
it should be laid uninjured close by, never attempts to replace it in its 
situation ; it contents itself with building another. But insects in similar 
contingencies often exhibit the most ingenious resources, their instinets 
surprisingly accommodating themselves to the new circumstances in which 
they are placed, in a manner more wonderful and incomprehensible than 
the existence of the faculties themselves. Take a honey-comb for 
instance. If every comb that bees fabricate were always made precisely 
alike—with the same general form, placed in the same position, the cells 
all exactly similar, or where varying with the variations always alike— 
this structure would perhaps in reality be not more astonishing than many 
of a much simpler conformation. But when we know that in nine 
instances out of ten the combs in a bee-hive are thus similar in their pro- 
perties, and yet that the tenth one shall be found of a form altogether 
peculiar ; placed in a different position ; with cells of a different shape— 
and all these variations evidently adapted to some new circumstance not 
present when the other nine were constructed,—we are constrained to 
admit that nothing in the instinct of other animals can be adduced exhibit- 
ing similar exquisiteness : just as we must confess an ordinary loom, how- 
ever ingeniously contrived, far excelled by one capable of repairing its 
defects when out of order. ; 

The examples of this variation and accommodation to circumstances 
among insects are very numerous; and as presenting many interesting 
facts in their history not before related, I shall not fear wearying you with 
a pretty copious detail of them, beginning with the more simple. 

It is the instinct of Geotrupes vernalis to roll up pellets of dung, in 
each of which it deposits one of its eggs; and in places where it meets 
with cow or horse-dung only, it is constantly under the necessity of 
having recourse to this process. But in districts where sheep are kept, 
this beetle wisely saves its labor, and ingeniously avails itself of the pellet- 
shaped balls ready made to its hands which the excrement of these animals 
supplies.' 

A caterpillar described by Bonnet, which from being confined in a box 
was unable to obtain a supply of the bark with which its ordinary instinet 


» Sturm, Deutschlands Fauna, i, 27. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 573 


directs it to make its cocoon, substituted pieces of paper that were given. 
to it, tied them together with silk, and constructed a very passable cocoon 
with them. In another instance the same naturalist having opened 
several cocoons of a moth (Cucullia Verbasci), which are composed of a 
‘mixture of grains of earth and silk, just after being finished, the larve did 
not repair the injury in the same .manner. Some employed both earth 
and silk; others contented themselves with spinning a silken veil before 
the opening." 

The larva of the cabbage-butterfly (Pontia Brassicie), when about to 
assume the pupa state, commonly fixes itself to the under side of the 
coping of a wall or some similar projection ; but the ends of the slender 
thread which serves for its girth would not adhere firmly to stone or brick, 
or even wood. In such situations, therefore, it previously covers a space 
of about an inch long and half an inch broad with a web of silk, and to 
this extensive base its girth can be securely fastened. That this proceed- 
ing, however, is not the result of a blind unaccommodating instinct seems 
proved by a fact which has come under my own observation. Having 
fed some of these larve in a box covered by a piece of muslin, they 
attached themselves to this covering; but as its texture afforded a firm 
hold to their girth, they span no preparatory web. 

Bombus® Muscorum, and some other species of humble-bees, cover 
their nests with a roof of moss. M. P. Huber having placed a nest of 
the former under a bell-glass, he stuffed the interstices between its bottom 
and the irregular surface on which it rested with a linen cloth. This 
cloth, the bees, finding themselves in a situation where no moss was to be 
had, tore thread from thread, carded it with their feet into a felted mass, 
and applied it to the same purpose as moss, for which it was nearly as 
well adapted. Some other humble-bees tore the cover of a book with 
which he had closed the top of the box that contained them, and made 
use of the detached morsels in covering their nest.? 

The larva of Cossus ligniperda, which feeds in the interior of trees, 
previously to fabricating a cocoon and assuming the pupa state, forms for 
the egress of the future moth a cylindrical orifice, except when it finds a 
suitable hole ready made. When the moth is about to appear, the chry- 
salis with its anterior end forces an opening in the cocoon. If the orifice 
in the tree has been formed by itself, in which case it exactly fits its body, 
it entirely quits the cocoon, and pushes itself half way out of the hole, 
- where it remains secure from falling until the moth is disclosed. But if 
the orifice, having been adopted, be larger than it ought to have been, 
and thus not capable of supporting the pupa in this position, the provident 
insect pushes itself only half way out of the cocoon, which thus serves 
for the support which in the former case the wood itself afforded.* 

The variations in the procedures of the larva of a little moth described 
by Reaumur, whose habitation has been before noticed—one of those 
which constantly reside in a sub-cylindrical case—are still more remarka- 
ble. This little caterpillar feeds upon the elm, the leaves of which serve 
it at once for food and clothing. It eats the parenchyma or inner pulp, 
burrowing between the upper and under membranes ; of portions of which 


 Cuvres, ii. 238. See above, p. 461. * Apis, **.e.2.K. 3 Linn. Trans. vi. 254, 
4 Lyonet, Traité Anatomique, &c. 16. 


574 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


cut out, and properly sewed together, it forms its case. Its usual plan is 
to insinuate itself between the epidermal membranes of the leaf, close to 
one of the edges. Parallel with this it excavates a cavity of suitable 
form and dimensions, gnawing the pulp even out of every projection of 
the serratures, but carefully avoiding to separate the membranes at the 
very edge, which with a wise saving of labor it intends should form one 
of the seams of its coat; and as the little miner is not embarrassed with 
the removal of the excavated materials, which it swallows as it proceeds, 
a cavity sufficiently large is but the work of a few hours. It then lines 
it with silk, at the same time pushing it into a more cylindrical shape; and 
lastly, cutting it off at. the two ends and inner side, it sews up the latter 
with such nicety that the suture is scarcely discoverable ; and is now pro- 
vided with a case or coat exactly fitting its body, open at the two ends, 
by one of which it feeds, and by the other discharges its excrement, 
having on one side a nicely joined seam, and the other—that which is 
commonly applied to its back—composed of the natural marginal junction 
of the membranes of the leaf. ; 

Such are the ordinary operations of this insect, which,—when it is 
considered that the case is rather fusiform than cylindrical; that the end 
through which it eats is circular, and the other curiously three-cornered 
like a cocked hat; and that consequently its cloth requires to be very 
irregularly and artfully cut to be accommodated to such a figure,—it must 
be admitted, are the result of an instinct of no very simple kind. Com- 
plicated, however, as these manceuvres seem, our ingenious workman 
is not confined to them. By way of putting its resources to the test, 
Reaumur cut off the serrated edge from the nearly finished coat of one of 
them, and exposed the little occupant to the day. He expected that it 
would have quitted its mutilated garment and commenced another; and 
so it certainly would, bad it been guided by an invariable instinct. But 
he calculated erroneously. Like one of its brother tailors of the biped 
race, it knew how “to cut its coat according to its cloth,” and immediately 
setting about repairing the injury sewed up the rent. Nor was this all. 
The scissars having cut off one of the projections intended to enter into 
the construction of the triangular end of its case, it entirely changed the 
original plan, and made that end the head which had been first designed 
for the tail. : 

On another occasion Reaumur observed one of these larve to cut out 
its coat from the very centre of a leaf, where it is obvious a series of 
operations wholly different must be adopted, the two membranes compos- 
ing it necessarily requiring to be cut and sewed on two sides instead of on 
one only. But what was most striking in this new procedure was the 
alteration which the caterpillar made in the period of sewing up its gar- 
ment. When these larve cut out their case from the edge of a leaf, they 
seem aware that if they were to detach it entirely from the inner side 
before the process of sewing, lining, &c. is completed, having no support 
on the exterior edge, it would be liable to fall down; at the time they 
could not sew together the membranes composing it at the inner side, 
without cutting them in part from the leaf. While, therefore, they divide 
the major part of their inner side from the leaf, they artfully leave them 
attached to it by one of the large nerves at each end; and these supports 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 575 


they do not cut asunder until the intermediate space has been sewed up, 
and they are ready to step, with their house on their back, upon the terra 
Jirma of the disk of the leaf. In this instance, therefore, the larve do not 
wholly separate their case from the leaf, until it is sewed. But when the 
same larve cut out their materials from the middle of the leaf, where, 
though completely cut round, they are retained in their situation secure 
from all danger of falling by the serratures of the incisions made by the 
jaws of the larve, these little tailors vary their mode, and entirely detach 
the pieces from the surrounding leaf before they proceed to set a stitch 
into them.? 

' A remarkable instance of variation of instinct in the common house- 
spider (Aranea domestica) is mentioned by an anonymous writer in the 
Zoological Journal. He states that having placed one on a piece of wood 
fixed in the middle of a glass of water, the spider, finding its other efforts 
to escape ineffectual, enveloped its abdomen by means of its hinder legs 
in a loose web which it spun, and then descended at once without the least 
hesitation into the water, surrounded under its mantle with a bubble ’of air, 
evidently intended for respiration as it included the spiracles; and in this 
extemporaneous diving-bell, like that of the water-spider (Argyroneta 
aquatica) before described, it endeavored to make its escape on every side, 
but, on account of the slipperiness of the glass, in vain ; and after remain- 
ing at the bottom of the water for thirteen minutes, it returned apparently 
much exhausted, as it coiled itself under its wooden platform without 
motion.” As we cannot refer so philosophical a contrivance to reason, we 
must regard it as a variation of instinct; but certainly, if correctly 
reported, a very curious one, as the occasion on which the house-spider 
cail want to escape through water must be very rare. 

In the preceding instances the variation of instinct takes place in the 
same individual; but Bonnet mentions a very curious fact, in which it 
occurs in different generations of the same species. There are annually, 
he informs us, two generations of the Angoumois moth, an insect which 
has been before mentioned as destructive to wheat: the first appear in May 
and June, and lay their eggs upon the ears of wheat in the fields; the 
second appear at the end of the summer or in autumn, and these lay their 
eggs upon wheat in the granaries. ‘These last pass the winter in the state 
of larve, from which proceeds the first generation of moths. But whag is 
extremely singular as a variation of instinct, those moths which are dis- 
closed in May and June in the granaries quit them with a rapid flight at 
sunset, and betake themselves to the yet unreaped fields, where they lay 
their eggs; while the moths which are disclosed in the granaries after 
harvest stay there, and never attempt to go out, but lay tlfeir eggs upon 
the stored wheat.3 This is as extraordinary and inexplicable as if a litter 
of rabbits produced in spring were impelled by instinct to eat vegetables, 
while another produced in. autumn should be as irresistibly directed to 
choose flesh. 

It is, however, into the history of the hive-bee that we must look for 
the most striking examples of variation of instinct; and here, as in every 
thing relating to this insect, the work of the elder Huber is an unfailing 
source of the most novel and interesting facts. 


1 Reaum. iii. 112—119. 2 Zoological Journ. i, 284. 3 uvres, ix. 370. 


576 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


It is the ordinary instinct of bees to lay the foundation of their combs 
at the top of the hive, building them perpendicularly downwards ; and 
they pursue this plan so constantly, that you might examine a thousand 
(probably ten thousand) hives, without finding any material deviation from 
it. Yet Huber in the course of his experiments forced them to build their 
combs perpendicularly upward'; and, what seems even more remarkable, 
in an horizontal direction.” 

The combs of bees are always at an uniform distance from each other, 
namely, about one third of an inch, which is just wide enough to allow 
them to pass easily and have access to the young brood. On the approach 
of winter, when their honey-cells are not sufficient in number to contain 
all the stock, they elongate them considerably, and thus increase their 
capacity. By this extension the intervals between the combs are 
unavoidably contracted; but in winter well-stored magazines are essential, 
while from their state of comparative inactivity spacious communications 
are less necessary. On the return of spring, however, when the cells are 
wanted for the reception of eggs, the bees contract the elongated cells to 
their former dimensions, and thus re-establish the just distances between 
the combs which the care of their brood requires.’ But this is not all. 
Not only do they elongate the cells of the old combs when there is an 
extraordinary harvest of honey, but they actually give to the new cells 
which they construct on this emergency a much greater diameter as well 
as a greater depth.4 

The queen-bee in ordinary circumstances places each egg in the centre 
of the pyramidal bottom of the cell, where it remains fixed by its natural 
gluten; but in an experiment of Huber, one whose fecundation had been 
retarded had the first segments of her abdomen so swelled that she was 
unable to reach the bottom of the cells. She therefore attached her eggs 
(which were those of males) to their lower side, two lines from the mouth. 
As the larve always pass that state in the place where they are deposited, 
those hatched from the eggs in question remained in the situation assigned 
them. But the working-bees, as if aware that in these circumstances the 
cells would be too short to contain the larve when fully grown, added to 
their length, even before the eggs were hatched.5 

Bees close up the cells of the grubs, previously to their transformation, 
with a cover or lid of wax; and in hanging its abode with a silken tapestry 
before it assumes the pupa state, the grub requires that the cell should not 
be too short for its movements. Bonnet having placed a swarm in a very 
flat glass hive, the bees constructed one of the combs parallel to one of 
the principal sides, where it was so straight that they could not give to the 
cells their ordinary depth. The queen, however, laid eggs in them, and 
the workers daily nourished the grubs, and closed the cells at the period 
of transformation, A few days afterwards he was surprised to perceive in 
the lids holes more or less large, out of which the grubs partly projected, 
the cells having been too short to admit of their usual movements. He 
was curious to know how the bees would proceed. He expected that 
they would pull all the grubs out of the cells, as they commonly do when 
great disorders in the combs take place. But he did not sufficiently give 


1 Huber, it. 134. 2 Ibid. ii. 216. 3 Ibid. i. 348. « Ibid. ii, 227. 
§ Ibid. ie 119, 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 5717 


eredit to the resources of their instinct. They did not displace a single 
grub—they left them in their cells; but as they saw that these cells were 
not deep enough, they closed them afresh with lids much more convex 
than ordinary, so as to give to them a sufficient depth; and from that time 
no more holes were made in the lids. 

The working-bees, in closing up the cells containing larve, invariably 
give a convex lid to the large cells of drones, and one nearly flat to the 
smaller cells of workers; but in an experiment instituted by Huber to 
ascertain the influence of the size of the cells on that of the included 
larve, he transferred the larve of workers to the cells of drones. What 
was the result? Did the bees still continue blindly to exercise their ordi- 
nary instinct?) On the contrary, they now placed a nearly flat lid upon 
these large cells, as if well aware of their being occupied by a different 
race of inhabitants.} 

On some occasions bees, in consequence of Huber’s arrangements in the. 
interior of their habitations, have begun to build a comb nearer to the 
adjoining one than the usual interval ; but they soon appeared to perceive 
their error, aad corrected it by siving to the comb a gradual curvature, so 
as to resume the ordinary distance.” 

In another instance, in which various irregularities had taken place in 
the form of the combs, the bees, in prolonging one of them, had, contrary 
to their usual custom, begun two separate and distant Sositinnados: which 
in approaching instead of joining would have interfered with each other, 
had not the bees, apparently foreseeing the difficulty, gradually bent their 
edges soas to make them join with such exactness that they could after- 
wards continue them conjointly.? 

In constructing their combs, bees, as you have been before told, in my 
letter on the habitations of insects, form the first range of cells—that by 
which the comb is attached to the top of the hive—of a different shape 
from the rest. Each cell, instead of being hexagonal, is pentagonal, having 
the fifth broadest side fixed to the top of the hive, whence the comb is 
much more securely cemented to that part than if the first range of cells 
had been of the ordinary construction. For some time after their fabrica- 
tion the combs remain in this state ; but at acertain period the bees attack 
the first range of cells as if in fury, gnaw away the sides without touching 
the lozenge-shaped bottoms ; and having mixed the wax with propolis, 
they form a cement well known to the ancients under the names of Mitys, 
Commosis, and Pissoceros, which they substitute in the place of the 
removed sides of the cells, forming of it thick and massive walls and 
heavy and shapeless pillars, which they introduce between the comb and 
the top of the hive so as to agglutinate them firmly together. Huber, who 
first in modern times witnessed this remarkable modification of the archt 
tecture of bees, observed that not only are they careful not to touch the 
bottoms of the cells, but that they do not remove at once the cells on both 
sides of the comb, which in that case might fall down; but they work 
alternately, first on one side and then on the other, replacing the demolished 
cells as they proceed with mitys, which firmly fixes the comb to its 
support. 

The object of this substitution of mitys for wax seems clear. While 


‘ Huber, i. 233. 2 Ibid. ii. 239. 3 Ibid. ii. 240. 
49 


578 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


the combs are new and only partially filled with homey, the first range of 
cells, originally established as the base and the guide for the pyramidal 
bottoms of the subsequent ones, serves as a sufficient support for them; 
but when they contain a store of several pounds, the bees seem to foresee 
the danger of such a weight proving too heavy for the thin waxen walls 
by which the combs are suspended, and providently hasten to substi- 
tute for them thicker walls, and pillars of a more compact and viscid 
material. 

But their foresight does not stop here. When they have sufficient 
wax, they make their combs of such a breadth as to extend to the sides 
of the hive, to which they cement them by constructions approaching 
more or less to the shape of cells. But when a scarcity of wax happens 
before they have been able to give to their combs the requisite diameter, 
a large vacant space is left between the edges of these combs, which are 
only fixed by their upper part, and the sides of the hive; and they 
might be pulled down by the weight of the honey, did not the bees ensure 
their stability by introducing large irregular masses of wax between their 
edges and the sides of the hive. A striking instance of this art of secur- 
ing their magazines occurred to Huber. A comb, not having been origi- 
nally well fastened to the top of his glass hive, fell down during the 
winter amongst the other combs, preserving, however, its parallelism with 
them. The bees could not fill up the space between its upper edge and 
the top of the hive, because they never construct combs of old wax, and 
they had not then an opportunity of procuring new: at a more favorable 
season they would not have hesitated to build a new comb upon the old 
one; but it being inexpedient at that period to expend their provision of 
honey in the elaboration of wax, they provided for the stability of the 
fallen comb by another process. They furnished themselves with wax 
from the other combs, by gnawing away the rims of the cells more elon- 
gated than the rest, and then betook themselves in crowds, some upon 
the edges of the fallen comb, others between its sides and those of the 
adjoining combs ; and there securely fixed it, by constructing several ties 
of different shapes between it and the glass of the hive: some were pillars, 
others buttresses, and others beams artfully disposed and adapted to the 
localities of the surfaces joined. Nor did they content themselves with 
repairing the accidents which their masonry bad experienced ; they pro- 
vided against those which might happen, and appeared to profit by the 
warning given by the fall of one of the combs to consolidate the others, 
and prevent a second accident of the same nature. These last had not 
been displaced, and appeared solidly attached by their base; whence 
Huber was not a little surprised to see the bees strengthen their principal 
points of connection by making them much thicker than before with old 
wax, and forming numerous ties and braces to unite them more closely to 
each other and to the walls of their habitation. What was still more 
extraordinary, all this happened in the middle of January, at a period when 
the bees ordinarily cluster at the top of the hive, and do not engage in 
labors of this kind.! 

You will admit, I think, that these proofs of the resources of the archi- 
tectural instinct of bees are truly admirable. If, in the case of the 


1 Huber, ii. 280. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 579 


substitution of mitys for the first range of waxen cells, this procedure _ 
invariably took place in every bee-hive at a fixed period—when, for exam- 
ple, the combs are two thirds filled with honey—it would be less surpris- 
ing; but there is nothing of this invariable character about it. It does 
not, as Huber expressly informs us', occur at any marked and regular 
period, but appears to depend on several circumstances not always com- 
bined. Sometimes the bees content. themselves with bordering the sides 
of the upper cells with propolis alone, without altering their form or 
giving them greater thickness. And it is not less remarkable that, from 
the instances last cited, it appears that they are not confined to one 
kind of cement for strengthening and supporting their combs, but avail 
themselves of propolis, wax, or a mixture of both, as circumstances 
direct. 

Not to weary you with examples of the modifications of instinct we are 
considering, I shall introduce but three more :—the first, of the mode in 
which bees extend the dimensions of an old comb; the second, of that 
which they adopt in constructing the male cells and connecting them with 
the smaller cells of workers; and the last, of the plan pursued by them 
when it becomes necessary to bend their combs. 

You must have observed that a comb newly made becomes gradually 
thinner at its edges, the cells there, on each side, progressively decreasing 
in length; but in time these marginal cells, as they are wanted for the 
purposes of the hive, are elongated tothe depth of the rest. Now sup- 
pose bees, from an augmentation of the size of their hive, to have occa- 
sion to extend their combs either in length or breadth, the process which 
they adopt is this :—they gnaw away the tops of the marginal cells until 
the combs have resumed their original lenticular form, and then construct 
upon their edges the pyramidal lozenge-shaped bottoms of cells, upon 
which the hexagonal sides are subsequently raised, as in their operation 
of cell-building. This course of proceeding is invariable: they never 
extend a comb in any direction whatever without having first made its 
edges thinner, diminishing its thickness in a portion sufficiently large 
to leave no angular projection. Huber observes, and with reason, in 
relating this surprising law which obliges bees partially to demolish the 
cells situated upon the edges of the combs, that it deserves a more close 
examination than he found himself competent to give it; for if we may 
to a certain point form a conception of the instinct which leads these 
animals to employ their art of building cells, yet how can we conceive 
of that which in particular circumstances forces them to act in an oppo- 
site direction, and determines them to demolish what they have so labori- 
ously constructed ?* 

Drones, or male bees, are more bulky than the workers; and you have 
been told, in speaking of the habitations of insects, that the cells which 
bees construct for rearing the larve of the former are larger than those des- 
tined for the education of the larve of the latter. The diameter of the cells 
of drones is always 33 lines (or twelfths of an inch), that of those of work- 
ers 2° lines ; and these dimensions are so constant in their ordinary cells, 
that some authors have thought they might be adopted as an universal 
and invariable scale of measure, which would have the great recommenda- 


4 Huber, ii. 284. note *. ? Ibid. ii, 228, 


580 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


tion of being every where at hand, and at all events would be preferable 
to our barfey-corns. Several ranges of male cells, sometimes from thirty 
to forty, are usually found in each comb, generally situated about the 
middle. Now as these cells are not isolated, but form a part of the entire 
comb, corresponding on its two faces—by what art is it that the bees 
unite hexagonal cells of a small with others of a larger diameter, without 
leaving any void spaces, and without destroying the uniformity and 
regularity of the comb? ‘This problem would puzzle an ordinary artist, 
but is easily solved by the resources of the instinct of our little workmen. 

When they are desirous of constructing the cells of males below those 
of workers, they form several ranges of intermediate or transition cells, 
of which the diameter augments progressively, until they have reached 
that range where the male cells commence; and in the same manner, 
when they wish to revert to the modelling of the cells of workers, they 
pass by a gradually decreasing gradation to the ordinary diameter of 
the cells of this class. We commonly meet with three or four ranges 
of intermediate cells before coming to those of males; the first ranges 
of which participate in some measure in the irregularity of the former. 

But it is upon the construction of the bot/oms of the intermediate ranges 
of cells that this variation of their architecture chiefly hinges. The bot- 
toms of the regular cells of bees are, as you are aware, composed of three 
equal-sized rhomboidal pieces ; and the base of a cell on one side of the 
comb is composed of portions of the bases of three cells on the other ; 
but the bottoms of the intermediate cells in question (though their orifices 
are perfectly hexagonal) are composed of four pieces, of which two are 
hexagonal and two rhomboidal ; and each, instead of corresponding with 
three cells on the opposite side, corresponds with four. The size and the 
shape of the four pieces composing the bottom vary ; and these interme- 
diate cells, a little larger than the third part of the three opposite cells, 
comprise in their contour a portion of the bottom of the fourth cell. Just 
below the last range of cells with regular pyramidal bottoms are found 
cells with bottoms of four pieces, of which three are very large, and one 
very small, and this last is a rhomb. The two rhombs of the transition 
cells are separated by a considerable interval; but the two hexagonal 
pieces are adjacent, and perfectly alike. A cell lower, we perceive that 
the two rhombs of the bottom are not so unequal: the contour of the cell 
has included a greater portion of the opposite fourth cell. Lastly, we 
find cells in pretty considerable number of which the bottom is composed 
of four pieces perfectly regular—namely, two elongated hexagons and 
two equal rhombs, but smaller than those of the pyramidal bottoms. In 
proportion as we remove our view from the cells with regular tetrahedral 
bottoms, whether in descending or from right to left, we see that the sub- 
sequent cells resume their ordinary form: that is to say, that one of their 
thombs is gradually lessened until it finally disappears entirely ; and the 
pyramidal form re-exhibits itself, but on a larger scale than in the cells at 
the top of the comb. This regularity is maintained in a great number 
of ranges, namely, those consisting of male cells; afterwards the cells 
diminish in size, and we again remark the tetrahedral bottoms just described, 
until the cells have once more resumed the proper diameter of those of 
workers. 


a 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 581 


It is, then, by encroaching in a small degree upon the cells of the other 
face of the comb, that bees at length succeed in giving greater dimen- 
sions to their cells ; and the graduation of the transition cells being recip- 
rocal on the two faces of the comb, it follows that on both sides each 
hexagonal contour corresponds with four cells. When the bees have 
arrived at any degree of this mode of operating, they can stop there and 
continue to employ it in several consecutive ranges of cells; but it is to 
the intermediate degree that they appear to confine themselves for the 
longest period, and we then find a great number of cells of which the 
bottoms of four pieces are perfectly regular. ‘They might, then, construct 
the whole comb on this plan, if their object were not to revert to the 
pyramidal form with which they set out. In building the male cells, the 
bees begin their foundation with a block or mass of wax thicker and higher 
than that employed for the cells of workers, without which it would be 
impracticable for them to preserve the same order and symmetry in work- 
ing on a larger scale. 

Irregularities (to use the language of Huber, from whom the above 
details are abstracted) have often been observed in the cells of bees. 
Reaumur, Bonnet, and other naturalists, cite them as so many examples 
of imperfections. What would have been their astonishment if they had 
been aware that part of these anomalies are calculated ; that there exists, 
as it were, a moveable harmony in the mechanism by which the cells are 
composed? If, in consequence of the imperfection of their organs, or of 
their instruments, bees occasionally constructed some of their cells unequal, 
or of parts badly put together, it would still manifest some talent to be 
able to repair these defects, and to compensate one irregularity by ano- 
ther; but it is far more astonishing that they know how to quit their 
ordinary routine when circumstances require that they should build male 
cells; that they should be instructed to vary the dimensions and the 
shape of each piece so as to return toa regular order; and that, after 
having constructed thirty or forty ranges of male cells, they again leave 
the regular order on which these were formed, and arrive by successive 
diminutions at the point from which they set out. How should these 
insects be able to extricate themselves from such’ a difficulty—from such 
a complicated structure? how pass from the little to the great, from a 
regular plan to an irregular one, and again resume the former? These 
are questions which no known system can explain." 

Here again, as observed in a former instance, the wonder would be less, 
if every comb contained a certain number of transition and of male cells, 
constantly situated in one and the same part of it; but this is far from 
being the case. ‘The event which alone, at whatever period it may hap- 
pen, seems to determine the bees to construct male cells, is the oviposi- 
tion of the queen. So long as she continues to lay the eggs of workers, 
not a male cell is founded ; but as soon as she is about to lay male eggs, 
the workers seem aware of it, and you then see them form their cells 
irregularly, impart to them by degrees a greater diameter, and at length’ 
prepare suitable ranges of cradles for all the male race.” You must per- 
ceive how absurd it would be to refer this astonishing variation of instinct 


1 Huber, ii. 221—226. 244247. ? Ibid. ii. 226, 
49* 


582 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


to any mere change in the sensations of the bees; agd to what far-fetched 
and gratuitous suppositions we must be reduced, if we adopt any such 
explanation. We can but refer it to an instinct of which we know 
nothing ; and so referring it, can we help exclaiming with Huber, “Such 
is the grandeur of the views, and of the means of ordaining wisdom, that 
it is not by a minute exactness that she marches to her end, but proceeds 
from irregularity to irregularity, compensating one by another: the admea- 
surements are made on high, the apparent errors appreciated by a divine 
geometry ; and order often results from partial diversity. ‘This is not the 
first instance which science has presented to us of preordained irregu- 
larities which astonish our ignorance, and are the admiration of the most 
enlightened minds. So true it is that the more we investigate the general 
as well as particular laws of this vast system, the more perfection does it 
present.””? 

It is observed by M. P. Huber, in his appendix to the account of his 
father’s discoveries relative to the architecture of bees, that in general the 
form of the prisms or tubes of the cells is more essential than that of their 
bottoms, since the tetrahedral-bottomed transition cells, and even those 
cells which being built immediately upon wood or glass were entirely with- 
out bottoms, still preserved their usual shape of hexagonal prisms. But 
a remarkable experiment of the elder Huber shows that bees can alter 
even the form of their cells when circumstances require it, and that in a 
way which one would not have expected. 

Having placed in front of a comb which the bees were constructing a 
slip of glass, they seemed immediately aware that it would be very diffi- 
cult to attach it to so slippery a surface ; and instead of continuing the 
comb in a straight line, they bent it at a right angle, so as to extend 
beyond the slip of glass, and ultimately fixed it to an adjoining part of 
the wood-work of the hive which the glass did not cover. This devia- 
tion, if the comb had been a mere simple and uniform mass of wax, 
would have evinced no small ingenuity ; but you will bear in mind that 
a comb consists on each side, or face, of cells having between them bot- 
toms in common ; and if you take a comb, and, having softened the wax 
by heat, endeavor to bend it in any part ata right angle, you will then 
comprehend the difficulties which our little architects had to encounter. 
The resources of their instinct, however, were adequate to the emergency. 
They made the cells on the convex side of the bent part of the comb 
much larger, and those on the concave side much smaller than usual ; the 
former having three or four times the diameter of the latter. But this 
was not all. As the bottoms of the small and large cells were as usual 
common to both, the cells were not regular prisms, but the small ones 
considerably wider at the bottom than at the top, and conversely in the 
large ones! What conception can we form of so wonderful a flexibility 
of instinct? How, as Huber asks, can we comprehend the mode in 
which such a crowd of laborers, occupied at the same time on the edge 
of the comb, could agree to give to it the same curvature from one extre- 
mity to the other; or how they could arrange together to construct on 
one face cells so small, while on the other they imparted to them such 


1 Huber, ii. 230. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 583 


enlarged dimensions? And how can we feel adequate astonishment 
that they should have the art of making cells of such different sizes 
correspond ?1 


After this long but I flatter myself not wholly uninteresting enumeration, 
you will scarcely hesitate to admit that insects, and of these the bee pre- 
eminently, are endowed with a much more exquisite and fiexible instinct 
than the larger animals. But you may be here led to ask, Can all this be 
referred to instinct? Is not this pliability to circumstances—this surprising 
adaptation of means for accomplishing an end—rather the result of reason ? 

You will not doubt my allowing the appositeness of this question, when 
I frankly tell you that so strikingly do many of the preceding facts seem 
at first view the effect of reason, that in my original sketch of the letter 
you are now reading, I had arranged them as instances of this faculty. 
But mature consideration has convinced me (though I confess the subject 
‘has great difficulties) that this view was fallacious ; and that though some 
circumstances connected with these facts may, as I shall hereafter show, 
be referable to reason, the facts themselves can only be consistently ex- 
plained by regarding them as I have here done, as examples of variations 
of particular instincts :—and this on two accounts. 

In the first place, these variations, however singular, are limited in their 
extent: all bees are, and have always been, able to avail themselves of a 
certain number, but not to increase that number. Bees cemented their 
combs, when becoming heavy, to the top of the hive with mitys, in the 
time of Aristotle and Pliny as they do now; and there is every reason to 
believe that then, as now, they occasionally varied their procedures, by 
securing them with wax or with propolis only, either added to the upper 
range of cells, or disposed in braces and ties tothe adjoming combs. But 
if in thus proceeding they were guided by reason, why not under certain 
circumstances adopt other modes of strengthening theircombs? Why not, 
when wax and propolis are scarce, employ mud, which they might see the 
martin avail herself of so successfully ? Or why should it not come into 
the head of some hoary denizen of the hive, that a little of the mortar with 
which his careful master plasters the crevices between his habitation and 
its stand might answer the end of mitys? ‘Si seulement ils élevoient une 
fois des cabanes quarrées”’ (says Bonnet, when speaking as to what faculty 
the works of the beaver are to be referred), ‘‘ mais ce sont éternellement 
des cabanes rondes ou ovales!:” and so we might say of the phenomena 
in question—Show us but one instance of bees having substituted mud or © 
mortar for mitys, pissoceros, or propolis, or wooden props for waxen ties, 
and there could be no doubt of their being here guided by reason. But 
since no such instance is on record; since they are still confined to the 
same limits—however surprising the range of these limits—as they were 
two thousand years ago; and since the bees emerged from their pupe but 
a few hours before will set themselves as adroitly to work, and pursue their 
operations as scientifically as their brethren, who can boast the experience 
of a long life of twelve months’ duration ;—we must still regard these 
actions as variations of instinct. 

In the second place, no degree of reason that we can with any share of 


1} Huber, ii. 219. * CEuvres, ix. 159. 


584 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


probability attribute to bees could be competent t@ the performance of 
labors so complicated as those we have been considering, and which, if the 
result of reason, would involve the most extensive and varied knowledge 
in the agents. Suppose a man to have attained by long practice the art 
of moddelling wax into a congeries of uniform hexagonal cells, with pyra- 
midal bottoms composed each of three rhombs, resembling the cells of 
workers among bees. Let him now be set to make a congeries of similar 
but larger cells (answering to the male cells), and unite these with the 
former by other hexagonal cells, so that there should be no disruption in 
the continuity or regularity of the whole assemblage, and no vacant inter- 
vals or patching at the junctions either of the tubes or the bottoms of the 
cells ;—and you would have set him no very easy task—a task, in short, 
which it may be doubted if he would satisfactorily perform in a twelvemonth, 
though gifted with a clear head and a competent store of geometrical 
knowledge, and which, if destitute of these requisites, it may be safely 
asserted that he would never perform at all. How then can we imagine 
it possible that this difficult problem, and others of a similar kind, can be 
so completely and exactly solved by animals of which some are not two 
days old, others not a week, and probably none a year? ‘The conclusion 
is irresistible—it is not reason but instinct that is their guide. 

The second head, under which I proposed contrasting the instinct of 
insects with those of the larger animals, was that of their number in the 
same individual. In the latter this is for the most part very limited, not 
exceeding (if we omit those common to almost all animated beings) eight 
or ten distinct instincts. ‘Thus in the common duck, one instinct leads it 
at its birth from the egg to rush to the water; another to seek its proper 
food ; a third to pair with its mate; a fourth to form a nest; a fifth to sit 
upon its eggs till hatched ; a sixth to assist the young ducklings in extri- 
cating themselves from the shell; and a seventh to defend them when in 
danger until able to provide for themselves: and it would not be easy, as 
far as my knowledge extends, to add many more distinct instinctive actions 
to the enumeration, or to adduce many species of the superior classes of 
animals endowed with a greater number. 

But how vastly more manifold are the instincts of the majority of insects ! 
It is not necessary to insist upon those differences which take place in the 
same insect in its different states, leading it'to select one kind of food in 
the larva and another in the perfect state—to defend itself in one mode in the 
former, and in another in the latter, &c.; because, however remarkable 
these variations, they may be referred with great plausibility to those strik- 
ing changes in the organic structure of the animal which occur at the two 
periods of its existence. It is to the number of instincts observable in 
the same individual of many insects in their perfect state that I now con- 
fine myself; and as the most striking example of the whole I shall select 
the hive-bee,—begging you to bear in mind that I do not mean to include 
those exhibited by the queen, the drones, or even those of the workers 
termed by Huber ciriéres (wax-makers); but only to enumerate those 
presented by that portion of the workers termed by Huber nourrices or 
petites abcilles (nurses), upon whom, as you have been before told, with 
the exception of making wax, laying the foundation of the cells, and col- 
lecting honey for being stored, the principal labors of the hive devolve. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 585 


It will be these individuals alone that I shall understand by the term bees, 
under the present head; and though the other inhabitants of the hive may 
occasionally concur in some of their actions and labors, yet it is obvious 
that so many as are those in which they distinctly take part, so many 
instincts must we regard them as endowed with. 

To begin, then, with the formation of the colony. By one instinet 
bees are directed to send out scouts previously to their swarming, in search 
of a suitable abode; and by another to rush out of the hive after the 
queen that leads forth the swarm, and follow wherever she bends her 
course. Having taken possession of their new abode, whether of their 
own selection or prepared for them by the hand of man, a third instinct 
teaches them to cleanse it from all impurities' ; a fourth to collect propolis, 
and with it to stop up every crevice except the entrance ; a fifth to venti- 
late the hive for preserving the purity of the air; and a sixth to keep a 
constant guard at the door.” 

In constructing the houses and streets of their new city, or the cells 
and combs, there are probably several distinct instincts exercised ; but, 
not to leave room for objection, I shall regard them as the result of 
one only: yet the operations of polishing the interior of the cells, and 
soldering their angles and orifices with propolis, which are sometimes not 
undertaken for weeks after the cells are built?; and the obscure, but still 
more curious one, of varnishing them with the yellow tinge observable in 
old combs,—seem clearly referable to at least two distinct instincts. ‘The 
varnishing process is so little connected with that of building, that though 
it takes place in some combs in three or four days, it does not in others 
for several months, though both are equally employed for the same uses.‘ 
Huber ascertained by accurate experiment that this tinge is not owing to 
the heat of the hives; to any vapors in the air which they include ; to 
any emanations from the wax or honey ; nor to the deposition of this last 
in the cells; but he inclines to think it is occasioned by a yellow matter 
which the bees seem to detach from their mandibles, and to apply to the 
surface which they are varnishing, by repeated strokes of these organs and 
of the fore-feet.° 

In their out-of-door operations several distinct instincts are concerned. 
By one they are led to extract honey from the nectaries of flowers ; by 
another to collect pollen after a process involving very complicated mani- 
pulations, and requiring a singular apparatus of brushes and baskets ; and 
that must surely be considered a third which so remarkably and beneficially 
restricts each gathering to the same plant. It is clearly a distinct instinct 
which inspires bees with such dread of rain, that even if a cloud pass 
before the sun, they return to the hive in the greatest haste®; and that 
seems to me not less so, which teaches them to find their way back to 
their home after the most distant and intricate wanderings. When bees 
have found the direction in which their hive lies, Huber says they fly to it 
with an extreme rapidity, and as straight as a ball from a musket’; and 
if their hives were always in open situations, one might suppose, as Huber 
seems inclined to think, that it is by their sight they are conducted to them. 
But hives are frequently found in small gardens embowered in wood, and 


1 Huber, ii. 102. 2 Ibid. i. 186. ii. 412. 3 Ibid, ii. 264. 
* Ibid. ii. 274. 5 Ibid. ii. 275. 6 Thid. i. 356. 7 Ibid. ii. 367. 


586 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


in the midst of villages surrounded and interspersed*with trees and build- 
ings, so as to make it impossible that they can be seen from a distance. 
If you had been with me in 1815, in the famous Pays de Waes in Flan- 
ders, where the country is a perfect flat, and the inhabitants so enamored 
either of the beauty or profit of trees that their fields, which are rarely 
above three acres in extent, are constantly surrounded with a double row, 
making the whole district one vast wood, you would have pitied the poor 
bees if reduced to depend on their own eyesight for retracing the road 
homeward. In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out at every 
outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of thetown. Trees 
—trees—trees—still met me, and intercepted the view in every direction ; 
and I defy any inhabitant bee of this rural metropolis, after once quitting 
its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicularly 
over it. The bees, therefore, of the Pays de Waes, and consequently all 
other bees, must be led to their abodes by instinct, as certainly as it is 
instinct that directs the migrations of birds or of fishes, or domestic quad- 
rupeds to find out their homes from inconceivable distances." When they 
have reached the hive, another instinct leads them to regurgitate into 
the extended proboscis of their hungry companions who have been occu- 
pied at home a portion of the honey collected in the fields ; and another 
directs them to unload their legs of the masses of pollen, and to store it in 
the cells for future use. 

Several distinct instincts, again, are called into action in the important 
business of feeding the young brood. One teaches them to swallow 
pollen, not to satisfy the calls of hunger, but that it may undergo in their 
stomach on elaboration fitting it for the food of the grubs; and another to 
regurgitate it when duly concocted, and to administer it to their charge, 
proportioning the supply to the age and condition of the recipients. A 
third informs them when the young grubs have attained their full growth, 
and directs them to cover their cells with a waxen lid, convex in the male 
cells, but nearly flat in those of workers ; and by a fourth, as soon as the 
young bees have burst into day, they are impelled to clean out the deserted 
tenements and to make them ready for new occupants. 

Numerous as are the instincts I have already enumerated, the list must 
yet include those connected with that mysterious principle which binds 


1 The following striking anecdote of this last species of instinct, in an animal not famed 
for sagacity, was related to me by Lieutenant (now Lieut.-Colonel) Alderson (Royal Engi- 
neers), who was personally acquainted with the facts.—In March, 1816, an ass, the property 
of Captain Dundas, R. N., then at Malta, was shipped on board the Ister frigate, Captain 
Forrest, bound from Gibraltar for that island. The vessel having struck on some sands off 
the Point de Gat, at some distance from the shore, the ass was thrown overboard to give it 
a chance of swimming to land—a poor one, for the sea was running so high that a boat 
which left the ship was lost. A few days afterwards, however, when the gates of Gibraltar 
were opened in the morning, the ass presented himself for admittance, and proceeded to 
the stable of Mr. Week’s, a merchant, which he had formerly occupied, to the no small 
surprise of this gentleman, who imagined that from some accident the animal had never 
been shipped on board the Ister. On the return of this vessel to repair, the mystery was 
explained ; and it turned out that Valiante (so the ass was called) had not only swam safely 
to shore, but, without guide, compass, or traveling map, had found his way from Point de 
Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, which he had never traversed 
before, through a mountainous and intricate country, intersected by streams, and in so 
short a period that he could not have made one false turn. His not having been stopped 
on the road was attributed to the circumstance of his having been formerly used to whip 
criminals upon, which was indicated to the peasants, who have a superstitious horror of 
such asses, by the holes in his ears, to which the persons flogged were tied. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 587 


the working-bees of a hive to their queen; the singular imprisonment in 
which they retain the young queens that are to lead off a swarm, until 
their wings be sufficiently expanded to enable them to fly the moment 
they are at liberty, gradually paring away the waxen wall that confines 
them to their cell to an extreme thinness, and only suffering it to be 
broken down at the precise moment required; the attention with which, 
in these circumstances, they feed the imprisoned queen by frequently 
putting honey upon her proboscis, protruded from a small orifice in the 
lid of her cell; the watchfulness with which, when at the period of 
swarming more queens than one are required, they place a guard over the 
cells of those undisclosed, to preserve them from the jealous fury of their 
excluded rivals; the exquisite calculation with which they invariably 
release the oldest queens the first from their confinement ; the singular love 
of monarchical dominion, by which, when two queens in other circum- 
stances are produced, they are led to impel them to combat until one is 
destroyed ; the ardent devotion which binds them to the fate and fortunes 
of the survivor; the distraction which they manifest at her loss, and 
their resolute determination not to accept of any stranger until an interval 
has elapsed sufficiently long to allow of no chance of the return of 
their rightful sovereign; and (to omit a further enumeration) the obe- 
dience which in the utmost noise and confusion they show to her well- 
known hum. 

I have now instanced at least thirty distinct instincts with which every 
individual of the nurses’amongst the working-bees is endowed; and if to 
the account be added their care to carry from the hive the dead bodies of 
any of the community ; their pertinacity in their battles, in directing their 
sting at those parts only of the bodies of their adversaries which are 
penetrable by it; their annual autumnal murder of the drones, &e. 
&c.—it is certain that this number might be very considerably increased, 
perhaps doubled. 

At the first view you will be inclined to suspect some fallacy in this 
enumeration, and that this variety of actions ought to be referred rather 
to some general principle, capable of accommodating itself to different 
circumstances, than to so many different kinds of instinct. But to what 
principle? Not to reason, the faculty to which we assign this power of 
varying accommodation. All the actions above adduced come strictly 
under the description of instinctive actions, being all performed by every 
generation of bees since the creation of the world, and as perfectly a day 
or two after their birth as at any subsequent period. And as the very 
essence of instinct consists in the determinate character of the actions to 
which it gives birth, it is clear that every distinctly different action must 
be referred to a distinct instinct. Few will dispute that the instinct which 
leads a duck to resort to the water is a different instinct from that which 
leads her to sit upon her eggs ; for the hen, though endowed with one, is 
not with the other. In fact, they are as distinct and unconnected as the 
senses of sight and smell; and it appears to me that it would be as 
contrary to philosophical accuracy of language in the former case to call 
the two instincts modifications of each other, as in the latter so to desig- 
nate the two senses ; and as we say that a deaf and blind man has fewer 
senses than other men, so (strictly) we ought not to speak of instinct as 


588 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


one faculty (though, to avoid circumlocution, I have tnyself often employed 
this common mode of expression), or say that one insect has a greater or 
less share of instinct than another, but more or fewer instincts. That it 
is not always easy to determine what actions are to be referred toa distinct 
instinct and what to a modification of an instinct, | am very ready to 
admit ; but this is no solid ground for regarding all instincts as modifications 
of some one principle. It is often equally difficult to fix the limits between 
instinct and reason ; but we are not on this account justified in deeming 
them the same. 

This multitude of instincts in the same individual becomes more won- 
derful when considered in another point of view. Were they constantly 
to follow each other in regular sequence, so that each bee necessarily 
first began to build cells, then to collect honey, next pollen, and so on, we 
might plausibly enough refer them to some change in the sensations of the 
animal, caused by alterations in the structure and gradual development of 
its organs, in the same way as on similar principles we explain the sexual 
instincts of the superior tribes. But it is certain that no such consecutive 
series prevails. The different instincts of the bee are called into action 
in an order regulated solely by the needs of the society. If combs be 
wanted, no bee collects honey for storing until they are provided’; and 
if, when constructed, any accident injure or destroy them, every labor is 
suspended until the mischief is repaired or new ones substituted? When 
the crevices round the hive are effectually secured with propolis, the 
instinct directing the collection of this substance lies dormant; but transfer 
the bees to a new hive which shall require a new luting, and it is instantly 
re-excited. But these instances are superfluous. Every one knows that at 
the same moment of time the citizens of a hive are employed in the most 
varied aud opposite operations. Some are collecting pollen; others are 
in search of honey ; some busied at home in the first construction of the 
cells ; others in giving them their last polish; others in ventilating the 
hive ; others again in feeding the young brood and the like. 

Now, how are we to account for this regularity of procedure—this 
undeviating accuracy with which the precise instinct wanted is excited— 
this total absence of all confusion in the employment, by each inhabitant 
of the hive, of that particular instinct out of so many which the good of 
the community requires?) No thinking man ever witnesses the complex- 
ness and yet regularity and efficiency of a great establishment, such as the 
Bank of England or the Post Office, without marveling that even human 
reason can put together, with so little friction and such slight deviations 
from correctness, machines whose wheels are composed not of wood and 
iron, but of fickle mortals of a thousand different inclinations, powers, and 
capacities. Butif such establishments be surprising even with reason for 
their prime mover, how much more so isa hive of bees whose proceedings 
are guided by their instincts alone! We can conceive that the sensations 
of hunger experienced on awaking in the morning should excite into action 
their instinct of gathering honey. But all are hungry ; yet all do not rush 
out in search of flowers. What sensation is it that detains a portion of 
the hive at home, unmindful of the gnawings of an empty stomach, busied 
in domestic arrangements, until the return of their roving companions ? 


? Huber, ii. 64. 2 Ibid. ii. 138. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 589 


Of those that fly abroad, what conception can we form of the cause which, 
while one set is gathering honey or pollen, leads another company to load 
their legs with pellets of propolis? Are we to say that the instinct of the 
former is excited by one sensation, that of the latter by another? But 
why should one sensation predominate in one set of bees, while another 
takes the lead in a second ?—or how is it that these different instincts afe 
called up precisely in the degree which the actual and changing state of 
things in the hive requires? Of those which remain at home, what is it 
that determines in one party the instinct of building cells to prevail; in 
another that of ventilating the hive; in a third that of feeding the young 
brood? For my own part, I confess that the more I reflect on this sub- 
ject, and contrast the diversity of the means with the regularity and 
uniformity of the end, the more I am lost in astonishment. The effects 
of instinct seem even more wonderful than those of reason, in the same 
manner as the consentaneous movements of a mighty and divided army, 
which, though under the command of twenty generals, and from the most 
distant quarters, should meet at the assigned spot at the very hour fixed 
upon, would be more surprising than the steam-moved operations, however 
complex, of one of Boulton’s mints. 

For the sake of distinctness and compression, I have confined myself 
in considering the numbers of the instincts of individual insects to a single 
species, the bee; but if the history of other societies of these animals— 
wasps, ants, &c. detailed in my former letters,—be duly weighed, it will 
be seen that they furnish examples of the variety in question fully as 
striking. These corroborating proofs I shall leave to your own inference, 
and proceed to the third head, under which I proposed to consider the 
instincts of insects—that of their extraordinary development. 


The development of some of the instincts of the larger animals, such as 
those of sex, is well known to depend upon their age and the peculiar 
state of the bodily organs ; and to this, as before observed, the succession 
of different instincts in the same insect, in its larva and perfect state, is 
closely analogous. But what I have now in view is that extraordinary 
development of instinct which is dependent not upon the age or any change 
in the organization of the animal, but upon external events—which in 
individuals of the same species, age, and structure, in some circumstances 
slumbers unmoved, but may in others be excited to the most singular and 
unlooked-for action. In illustrating this property of instinct, which, as far 
as I am aware, is not known to occur in any of the larger animals, I shall 
confine myself as before to the hive-bee; the only insect, indeed, in which 
its existence has been satisfactorily ascertained, though it is highly probable 
that other species living in societies may exhibit the same phenomenon, 

Several of the facts occurring in the history of bees might be referred 
to this head; but I shall here advert only to the treatment of the drones 
by the workers under different circumstances, and to the operations of the 
latter consequent upon the irretrievable loss of the queen—facts which 
have been before stated to you, but to the principal features of which my 
present argument makes it necessary that I should again direct your 
attention. 

If a hive of bees be this year in possession of a queen duly fertilized, 


50 


590 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


and consequently sure the next season of a succession of males, all the 
drones, as [ have before stated, towards the approach of winter are mas- 
sacred by the workers with the most unrelenting ferocity. To this seem- 
ingly cruel course they are doubtless impelled by an imperious instinct ; 
and as it is regularly followed in every hive thus circumstanced, it would 
seem at the first view to be an impulse as intimately connected with the 
organization and very existence of the workers, and as incapable of change, 
as that which leads them to build cells or to store up honey. . But this is 
far from being the case. However certain the doom of the drones this 


autumn if the hive be furnished with a duly fertilized queen, their undis- . 


turbed existence over the winter is equally sure if the hive have lost. its 


sovereign, or her impregnation have been so retarded as to make a suc- 
cession of males in the spring doubtful. In such a hive the workers do. 


not destroy a single drone, though the hottest persecution rages in all the 
hives around them. 

Now, how are we to explain this difference of conduct? Are we to 
suppose that the bees know and reason upon this alteration in the cireum- 
stances of their community—that they infer the possibility of their entire 
extinction if the whole male stock were destroyed when without a queen— 
and that thus influenced by a wise policy they restrain the fury they would 


otherwise have exercised? This would be at once to make them not only’ 


gifted with reason, but endowed with a power of looking before and after, 
and a command over the strongest natural propensities, superior to what 
could be expected in a similar case even from a society of men, and is 
obviously unwarrantable.. The only probable supposition is, clearly, that 
a new instinct is developed suited to the extraordinary situation in which 


the community stands, leading them now to regard with kindness the. 


drones, for whom otherwise they would have felt the most violent aversion. 

In this instance, indeed, it would perhaps be more strictly correct to say 
(which, however, is equally wonderful) that the old instinct was extin- 
guished ; but in the case of the loss of a queen, to which I am next to 
advert, which is followed by positive operations, the extraordinary develop- 
ment of a new and peculiar instinct is indisputable. 

In a hive which no untoward event has deprived of its queen, the 
workers take no other active steps in the education of her successors— 
those of which one is to occupy her place when she has flown off at the 
head of a newswarm in spring—than to prepare a certain number of cells 
of extraordinary capacity for their reception while in the egg, and to feed 
them when become grubs with a peculiar food until they have attained 
maturity. ‘This, therefore, is their ordinary instinct; and it may happen 
that the workers of a hive may have no necessity for a long series of suc- 
cessive generations to exercise any other. But suppose them to lose their 
queen. Far from sinking into that inactive despair which was formerly 
attributed to them, after the commotion which the rapidly-circulated news 
of their calamity gave birth to has subsided, they betake themselves with 
an alacrity from which man when under misfortune might deign to take a 
lesson to the active reparation of their Joss. Several ordinary cells, as 
was before related at large, are without delay pulled down, and converted 
into a variable number of royal cells, capacious enough for the education 
of one or more queen-grubs selected out of the unhoused working-grubs— 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 591 


which in this pressing emergency are mercilessly sacrificed—and fed with 
the appropriate royal food to maturity. ~'Thus sure of once more acquir- 
ing a head, the hive return to their ordinary labors, and in about sixteen 
days one or more queens are produced; one of which, after being indebt- 
ed to fortune for an elevation as singular as that of Catherine the First of 
Russia, steps into day and assumes the reins of state. 

To this remarkable deviation from the usual procedures of the comntu- 
nity the observations above made in the case of the drones must be 
applied. We cannot account for it by conceiving the working-bees to 
be acquainted with the end which their operations have in view. If we 
suppose them to know that the queen and working-grubs are originally 
the same, and that to convert one of the latter into the former it is only 
necessary to transfer it to an apartment sufficiently spacious and to feed it 
with a peculiar food, we confer upon them a depth of reason to which 
Prometheus, when he made his clay man, had no pretensions—an original 
discovery, in short, to which man has but just attained after some thou- 
sand years of painful research, having escaped all the observers of bees 
from Aristomachus to Swammerdam and Reaumur of modern times. 
We have no other alternative, then, but to refer this phenomenon to the 
extraordinary development of a new instinct suited for the exigency, how- 
ever incomprehensible to us the manner of its excitement may appear. 


II. Such, then, are the exquisiteness, the number, and the extraordi- 
nary development of the instincts of insects. But is instinct the sole 
guide of their actions? Are they in every case the blind agents of irre- 
sistible impulse? These queries, 1 have already hinted, cannot in my 
opinion be replied to in the affirmative ; and I now proceed to show that 
though instinct is the chief guide of insects, they are endowed also with 
no inconsiderable portion of reason. 

Some share of reason is denied by few philosophers of the present day 
to the larger animals. But its existence has not generally (except by 
those who reject instinct altogether) been recognized in insects : probably 
on the ground that, as the proportions of reason and of instinct seem to 
coexist in an inverse ratio, the former might be expected to be extinct in 
a class in which the latter is found in such perfection. This rule, how- 
ever, though it may hold good in man, whose instincts are so few and 
imperfect, and whose reason is so pre-eminent, is far from being confirm- 
ed by an extended survey of the classes of animals generally. Many 
quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, with instincts apparently not very acute, do 
not seem to have their place supplied by a proportionably superior share 
of reason ; and insects, as I think the facts I have to adduce will prove, 
though ranking so low in the scale of creation, seem to enjoy as great a 
degree of reason as many animals of the superior classes, yet in combina- 
tion with instincts much more numerous and exquisite. 

I must premise, however, that in so perplexed and intricate a field, I 
am sensible how necessary it is to tread with caution. A far greater 
collection of facts must be made, and the science of metaphysics gene- 
rally be placed on ‘a more solid foundation than it now can boast, before 
we can pretend to decide, in numerous cases, which of the actions of 
insects are to be deemed purely instinctive, and which the result of reason. 


592 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


What I advance, therefore, on this head, I wish tobe regarded rather as 
conjectures, that, after the best consideration I am able to give toa subject 
so much beyond my depth, seem to me plausible, than as certainties to 
which I require your implicit assent. 

That reason has nothing to do with the major part of the actions of insects 
is clear, as I have before observed, from the determinateness and perfection 
of these actions, and from their being performed independently of instruc- 
tion and experience. A young bee (I must once more repeat) betakes 
itself to the complex operation of building cells with as much skill as the 
oldest of its compatriots. We cannot suppose that it has any knowledge 
of the purposes for which the cells are destined ; or of the effects that 
will result from its feeding the young larve, and the like. And if an 
individual bee be thus destitute of the very materials of reasoning as to 
its main operations, so must the society in general. 

Nor in those remarkable deviations and accommodations to circum- 
stances, instanced under a former head, can we, for considerations there 
assigned, suppose insects to be influenced by reason. These deviations 
are still limited in number, and involve acts far too complex and recondite 
to spring from any process of ratiocination in an animal whose term of 
life does not exceed two years. 

It does not follow, however, that reason may not have a part in inducing 
some of these last-mentioned actions, though the actions themselves are 
purely instinctive. I do not pretend to explain in what way or degree 
they are combined ; but certainly some of the facts do not seem to admit 
of explanation, except on this supposition. Thus, in the instance above 
cited from Huber, in which the bees bent a comb at right angles in order 
to avoid a slip of giass, the remarkable variations in the form of the cells 
can only, as I have there said, be referred to instinct. Yet the original 
determination to avoid the glass seems, as Huber himself observes, to 
indicate something more than instinct, since glass is not a substance 
against which nature can be supposed to have forewarned bees, there 
being nothing in hollow trees (their natural abodes) resembling it either 
in polish or substance; and what was most striking in their operations 
was, that they did not wait until they had reached the surface of the glass 
before changing the direction of the comb, but adopted this variation at a 
considerable distance, as though they foresaw the inconveniences which 
might result from another mode of construction.1_ However difficult it 
may be to form a clear conception of this union of instinct and reason in 
the same operation, or to define precisely the limits of each, instances of 
these mixed actions are sufficiently common among animals to leave little 
doubt of the fact. It is instinct which leads a greyhound to pursue a 
hare ; but it must be reason that directs “an old greyhound to trust the 
more fatiguing part of the chase to the younger, and to place himself so 
as to meet the hare in her doubles,’”? 

As another instance of these mixed actions in which both reason and 
instinct seem concerned, but the former more decidedly, may be cited the 
account which Huber gives cf the manner in which the bees of some of 
his neighbors protected themselves against the attacks of the death’s head 
moth (Acherontia atropos), laid before you in a former letter, by so closing 


1 Huber, ii. 219. * Hume’s Essay on the Reason of Animals. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 593 


the entrance of the hive with walls, arcades, casements, and bastions, built 
of a mixture of wax and propolis, that these insidious marauders could 
no longer intrude themselves. 

We can scarcely attribute these elaborate fortifications to reason sim- 
ply ; for it appears that bees have recourse to a similar defensive expe- 
dient when attacked even by other bees, and the means employed seem 
too subtile and too well adapted to the end to be the result of this faculty 
in a bee. 

But, on the other hand, if it be most probable that in this instance 
instinct was chiefly concerned, if we impartially consider the facts, it seems 
impossible to deny that reason had some share in the operations. Pure 
instinct would have taught the bees to fortify themselves on the first 
attack. If the occupants of a hive had been taken unawares by these 
gigantic aggressors one night, on the second, at least, the entrance should 
have been barricadoed. But it appears clear, from the statement of 
Huber, that it was not until the hives had been repeatedly attacked and 
robbed of nearly their whole stock of honey, that the bees betook them- 
selves to the plan so successfully adopted for the security of their remain- 
ing treasures ; so that reason, taught by experience, seems to have called 
into action their dormant instinct.’ 

If it be thus probable that reason has some influence upon the actions 
of insects which must be mainly regarded as instinctive, the existence of 
this faculty is still more evident in numerous traits of their history where 
instinct is little if at all concerned. An insect is taught by its instincts 
the most unerring means to the attainment of certain ends; but these 
ends, as I have already had occasion more than once to remark, are lim- 
ited in number, and such only as are called for by its wants in a state of 
nature. We cannot reasonably suppose insects to be gifted with instincts 
adapted for occasions that are never likely to happen. If, therefore, we 
find them, in these extraordinary and improbable emergencies, still avail- 
ing themselves of the means apparently best calculated for ensuring their 
object ; and if in addition they seem in some cases to gain knowledge by 
experience ; if they can communicate information to each other; and if 
they are endowed with memory,—it appears impossible to deny that they 
are possessed of reason. I shall now produce facts in proof of each of 
these positions; not by any means all that might be adduced, but a few 
of the most striking that occur to me. 


First, then, insects often, in cases not likely to be provided for by 
instinct, adopt means evidently designed for effecting their object. 

A certain degree of warmth is necessary to hatch a hen’s eggs, and we 
give her little credit for reason in sitting upon them for this purpose. 
But if any one had ever seen a hen make her nest in a heap of ferment- 
ing dung, among the bark of a hot-bed, or in the vicinity of a baker’s 
oven, where, the heat being as well adapted as the stoves of the Egyp- 
tians to bring her chickens into life, she left off the habit of her race, and 
saved herself the trouble of sitting upon them,—we should certainly 
pronounce her a reasoning hen; and if this hen had chanced to be that 
very one figured and so elaborately described by Professor Fischer with 


1 Huber, ii. 289. 
50* 


594 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


the profile of an old woman', a Hindoo metaphysicign at least could not 
doubt of her body, however hen-like, being in truth directed in its opera~ 
tions by the soul of some quondam amateur of poultry-breeding. Now 
societies of ants have more than once exhibited a deviation from their usual 
instinct, which to me seems quite as extraordinary and as indicative of 
reason as would be that supposed ina hen. A certain degree of warmth 
is required for the exclusion and rearing of their eggs, larve, and pupe ; 
and in their ordinary abodes, as you have been already told, they undergo 
great daily labor in removing their charge to different parts of the nest, 
as its temperature is affected by the presence or absence of the sun. But 
Reaumur, in refuting the common notion of ants being injurious to bees, 
tells us that societies of the former often saved themselves all this trouble, 
by establishing their colonies between the exterior wooden shutters and 
panes of his glass hives, where, owing to the latter substance being a 
tolerably good conductor of heat, their progeny was at all times, and with- 
out any necessity of changing their situation, in a constant, equable, and 
sufficient temperature.2_ Bonnet observed the same fact. He found that 
a society of ants had piled up their young to the height of several inches, 
between the flannel-lined case of his glass hives and the glass. When 
disturbed they ran away with them, but always replaced them.? 

I am persuaded that, after duly considering these facts, you will agree 
with me that it is impossible consistently to refer them to instinct, or to 
account for them without supposing some stray ant, that had insinuated 
herself into this tropical crevice, first to have been struck with the thought 
of what a prodigious saving of labor and anxiety would occur to her 
compatriots by establishing their society here ; that she had communicated 
her zdeas to them; and that they had resolved upon an emigration to this 
new-discovered country—this Madeira of ants—whose genial clime pre- 
sented advantages which no other situation could offer. Neither instinct, 
nor any conceivable modification of instinct, could have taught the ants 
to avail themselves of a good fortune which but for the invention of glass 
hives would never have offered itself to a generation of these insects 
since the creation ; for there is nothing analogous in nature to the constant 
and equable warmth of such a situation, the heat of any accidental mass 
of fermenting materials soon ceasing, and no heat being given out from a 
society of bees when lodged in a hollow tree, their natural residence. 
The conclusion, then, seems irresistible, that reason must have been their 
guide, inducing a departure from their natural instinct as extraordinary as 
would be that of a hen which should lay her eggs in a hot-bed, and cease 
to sit upon them. 

The adaptation of means to an end not likely to have been provided 
for by instinct is equally obvious in the ingenious mode by which a nest of 
humble-bees propped up their tottering comb, the particulars of which 
having before mentioned to you, I need not here repeat. 

There is perhaps no surer criterion of reason than, after having tried 
one mode of accomplishing a purpose, adopting another more likely to 
succeed. Insects are able to stand this test. A bee which Huber 


1 See Fischer’s Beschreibung eines Huhns mit menschendhnlichem Profile, 8vo. St. Petersburg, - 
1816; and a translation in Thomson’s Annals of Phil. viii. 241. 
2 Reaum. v. 709. 3 Cuovres, ii. 416. 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 595 


watched, while soldering the angles of a cell with propolis, detached a 
thread of this material, with which she entered the cell. Instinct would 
have taught her to separate it of the exact length required; but after 
applying it to the angle of the cell, she found it too long, and cut off a 
portion so as to fit it to her purpose." 

This is a very simple instance; but one such fact is as decisive in 
proof of reason as a thousand more complex, and of such there is no 
lack. Dr. Darwin (whose authority in the present case depending not on 
hearsay, but his own observation, may be here taken) informs us, that 
walking one day in his garden, he perceived a wasp upon the gravel 
walk with a large fly nearly as big as itself which it had caught. Kneel- 
ing down he distinctly saw it cut off the head and abdomen, and then, 
taking up with its feet the trunk or middle portion of the body to which 
the wings remained attached, fly away. But a breeze of wind acting 
upon the wings of the fly turned round the wasp with its burthen, and 
impeded its progress. Upon this it alighted again on the gravel walk, 
deliberately sawed off first one wing and then the other; and having 
thus removed the cause of its embarrassment, flew off with its booty.? 
Could any process of ratiocination be more perfect? ‘Something acts 
upon the wings of this fly and impedes my flight. ' If I wish to reach 
my nest quickly, I must get rid of them—to effect which, the shortest 
way will be to alight again and cut them off.” These reflections, or 
others of similar import, must be supposed to have passed through the 
mind of the wasp, or its actions are altogether inexplicable. Instinct might 
have taught it to cut off the wings of all flies, previously to fying away 
with them. But here it first attempted to fly with the wings on,—was 
impeded by a certain cause,—discovered what this cause was, and alighted 
to remove it. The chain of evidence seems perfect in proof that nothing 
but reason could have been its prompter.? ' - 

An analogous though less striking fact is mentioned by Reaumur, on the 
authority of M. Cossigny, who witnessed it in the Isle of France, where 
the Sphecina are accustomed to bury the bodies of cockroaches along 
with their eggs for provision for their young. He sometimes saw an insect 
of this tribe attempt to drag after it into its hole a dead cockroach, which 
was too big to be-made to enter by all its efforts. After several ineffectual 
trials the animal came out, cut off its elytra and some of its legs, and thus 
reduced in compass drew in its prey without difficulty.* 

Under this head I shall mention but one fact more. A friend of Gle- 
ditsch, the observer of the singular economy of the burying beetle (Necro- 
phorus vespillo) related in a former letter, being desirous of drying a dead 


1 Huber, ii. 268. 2 Zoonomia, i. 183. 

3 Mr. Newport has argued, in a paper read to the Entomological Society ( Trans. i. 228.), 
that the instinct of wasps is always to cut off the wings of flies before flying away with 
them, and that, consequently, the above fact proves nothing as to the reason of insects. 
Here, however, I must beg to differ from him; for, supposing Dr. Darwin’s statement to be 
accurate, which, from the minute particulars into which he enters, we have no right to 
doubt, the circumstances of the wasp’s first violating its natural instinct by flying away 
with the fly before cutting off its wings, and then, on finding the wind act upon them, 
alighting to do what it had neglected at first, cannot well be explained except on the sup- 
position of some reasoning process having passed through its mind. In any case, there is 
no need of this particular fact to prove the existence of reason in insects, of which such 
numerous other instances have been adduced. 

4 Reaum. vi. 283. 


596 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


toad, fixed it to the top of a piece of wood which he stuck into the 
ground. But, a short time afterwards, he found that a body of these 
indefatigable little sextons had circumvented him in spite of his precau- 
tions. Not being able to reach the toad, they had undermined the base 
of the stick until it fell, and then buried both stick and toad.! 


In the second place, insects gain knowledge from expertence, which 
would be impossible if they were not gifted with some portion of reason. 
In proof of their thus profiting, I shall select from the numerous facts 
that might be brought forward four only, one of which has been already 
slightly adverted to. 

M. P. Huber, in his valuable paper in the sixth volume of the Linnean 
Transactions®, states that he has seen large humble-bees, when unable 
from the size of their head and thorax to reach to the bottom of the long 
tubes of the flowers of beans, go directly to the calyx, pierce it as well 
as the tube with the exterior horny parts of their proboscis, and then 
insert their proboscis itself into the orifice and abstract the honey. ‘They 
thus flew from flower to flower, piercing the tubes from without, and suck- 
ing the nectar; while smaller humble-bees, or those with a longer probos- 
cis, entered in at the top of the corolla. Now, from this statement, it 
seems evident that the larger bees did not pierce the bottoms of the flowers 
until they had ascertained by trial that they could not reach the nectar 
from the top; but that having once ascertained by experience that the 
flowers of beans are too strait to admit them, they then, without further 
attempts in the ordinary way, pierced the bottoms of all the flowers which 
they wished to rifle of their sweets. M. Aubert du Petit-Thouars observed 
that humble-bees and the carpenter-bee (Xylocopa® violacea) gained access 
in a similar manner to the nectar of Antirrhinum linaria and majus and 
Mirabilis jalappa, as do the common bees of the Isle of France to that 
of Canna Indicat; and I have myself more than once noticed holes at 
the base of the long nectaries of Aquilegia vulgaris, which I attribute to 
the same agency.° 

A similar instance of knowledge gained by experience in the hive-bee 

1 Gleditsch, Physic. Bot. Gicon. Abhandl. iii. 220. WP Sees 

3 Apis**, d. 2. B. K. 4 Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences, i, 45. 

5 See an interesting article by Mr. C. Darwin in the Gardener’s Chronicle, 1841, p. 550., 
on the variations in the mode in which humble-bees pierce, as above described, the long- 
tubed corollas of different labaited plants. In Stachys coccinea, Mirabilis jalappa,and Salvia 
coccinea, each corolla had a hole on its upper side near the base ; whereas in Sa/via Grahami, 
which has a more elongated calyx, this part also was invariably pierced ; and in Penstemon 
argatus the rather broader corolla had always two holes, in order to give the bees more ready 
access to the nectar on both sides of the germen. All these holes are on the upper side of 
the base of the corolla; but in the common Antirrhinum they are on the under side, so as to 
be directly in front of the nectary. Town-educated humble-bees Mr. Darwin found always 
draw off the nectar from these last-named flowers growing in the London Zoological Gar- 
dens through these ariificial orifices; while from two years’ observation he is persuaded 
that their rustic brethren are less clever, and invariably gain access to the nectar of snap- 
dragons growing in the country by forcing open the elastic lower lip and creeping into the 
flower. Possibly different species or sexes of humble-bees may be here concerned; but 
one instance, in which the same individual bee cut holes in the base of some flowers of 
Rhododendron azalevides and entered the mouth of others, seems as strong a proof of reason 
as can well be imagined, as the proceedings of the little animal were evidently varied 
according to the varying necessity of the case ; and if, as Mr. Darwin thinks he has ob- 
served, the hive-bees frequenting these flowers by degrees came to discover and avail 


themselves of the orifices made by the humble-bees, this fact, as he justly remarks, offers a 
very striking proof of acquired knowledge in insects. 


—— ee 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 597 


is related by Mr. Wailes. He observed that all the bees, on their first 
visit to the blossoms of a passion-flower (Passiflora cerulea) on the wall 
of his house, were for a considerable time puzzled by the numerous over- 
wrapping rays of the nectary, and only after many trials, sometimes last- 
ing two or three minutes, succeeded in finding the shortest way to the 
honey at the bottom of the calyx; but experience having taught them 
this knowledge, they afterwards constantly proceeded at once to the most 
direct mode of obtaining the honey ; so that he could always distinguish 
bees that had been old visiters of the flowers from new ones, the last 
being invariably at first long at a loss, while the former flew at once to 
their object.! 

My third fact is supplied by the same ants whose sagacious choice of 
the vicinity of Reaumur’s glass hives for their colony has been just related 
to you. He tells us that of these ants, of which there were such swarms 
on the outside of the hive, not a single one was ever perceived within ; 
and infers that, as they are such lovers of honey, and there was no diffi- 
culty in finding crevices to enter in at, they were kept without, solely from 
fear of the consequences. Whence arose this fear? We have no ground 
for supposing ants endowed with any instinctive dread of bees; and 
Reaumur tells us, that when he happened to leave in his garden hives of 
which the bees had died, the ants then never failed to enter them and 
regale themselves with the honey. It seems reasonable, therefore, to 
attribute it to experience. Some of the ants, no doubt, had tried to enter 
the peopled as they did the empty hive, but had been punished for their 
presumption ; and the dear-bought lesson was not lost on the rest of the 
community. 

The fourth instance under this head which I shall mention is that sup- 
plied by an Indian species of ant (Formica indefessa Sykes). A colony 
of these voracious insects in Col. Sykes’s house at Poona having been 
circumvented in their repeated and successful attacks on the sweetmeats 
always left on a sideboard, when it was removed to a distance from the 
wall sufficient to prevent their reaching it climbed up the wall to the height 
of about a foot above its level, and then let themselves fall so as to alight 
on the table, as Colonel Sykes himself witnessed with equal surprise and 
admiration.> Here it is obvious that it was only after experience had 
shown the ants the inefficacy, in the altered position of the table, of their 
former modes of attacking the sweetmeats, that they adopted this novel 
and ingenious way of getting access to them, which, whether we refer it 
to reason or a variation of instinct, is equally remarkable. 


Insects, in the third place, are able mutually to communicate and receive 
information, which, in whatever way effected, would be impracticable if 
they were devoid of reason. Under this head it is only necessary to refer 
you to the endless facts in proof, furnished by almost every page of my 
letters on the history of ants and of the hive-bee. I shall therefore but 
detain you for a moment with an additional anecdote or two, especially 
with one respecting the former tribe, which is valuable from the celebrity 
of the relater. 

Dr. Franklin was of opinion that ants could communicate their ideas to 


1 Entom. Mag. i, 525. ? Reaum. v. 709. 3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 105. 


598 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


each other; in proof of which he related to Kalmethe Swedish traveler 
the following fact. Having placed a pot containing treacle in a closet 
infested with ants, these insects found their way into it, and were feasting 
very heartily when he discovered them. He then shook them out, and 
suspended the pot by a string from the ceiling. By chance one ant 
remained, which, after eating its fill, with some difficulty found its way up 
the string, and thence reaching the ceiling, escaped by the wall to its nest. 
In less than half an hour a great company of ants sallied out of their hole, 
climbed the ceiling, crept along the string into the pot, and began to eat 
again. This they continued until the treacle was all consumed, one swarm 
running up the string while another passed down.' It seems indisputable 
that the one ant had in this instance conveyed news of the booty to his 
comrades, who would not otherwise have at once directed their steps in a 
body to the only accessible route. 

A German artist, a man of strict veracity, states that in his journey 
through Italy he was an eyewitness to the following occurrence. He 
observed a species of Scarabeus (Ateuchus pilularius ?) busily engaged in 
making, for the reception of its eg¢, a pellet of dung, which when finished 
it rolled to the summit of a small hillock, and repeatedly suffered to tumble 
down its side, apparently for the sake of consolidating it by the earth 
which each time adhered to it. During this process the pellet unluckily 
fell into an adjoining hole, out of which all the efforts of the beetle to 
extricate it were in vain. After several ineffectual trials, the insect 
repaired to an adjoining heap of dung, and soon returned with three of his 
companions. All four now applied their united strength to the pellet, and 
at length succeeded in pushing it out; which being done, the three 
assistant beetles left the spot and returned to their own quarters.” 


Lastly, insects are endowed with memory, which (at least in connection 
with the purposes to which it is subservient) implies some degree of reason 
also; and their historian may exclaim with the poet who has so well sung 
the pleasures of this faculty, 


“ Hail, Memory, hail! thy universal reign 
Guards the least link of Being’s glorious chain.” 


In the elegant lines in which this couplet occurs*, which were pointed 
out to me by my friend Dr. Alderson of Hull, Mr. Rogers supposes the 
bee to be conducted to its hive by retracing the scents of the various 


1 Kalm’s Travels in North America, i. 239. 
? Illiger, Mag. i. 488. 


3 “ Hark! the bee winds her small but mellow horn, 
Blithe to salute the sunny smile of morn. 
O’er thymy downs she bends her busy course, 
And many a stream allures her to its source. 
’Tis noon, ’tis night. That eye so finely wronght, 
Beyond the search of sense, the soar of thought, 
Now vainly asks the scenes she left behind ; 
Its orb so full, its vision so confined ! 
Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell ? 
Who bids her soul with conscious triumph swell ? 
With conscious truth retrace the mazy clue 
Of varied scents that charm’d her as she flew ? 
Hail, Memory, hail! thy universal reign 
Guards the least link of Being’s glorious chain.” 


INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 599 


‘ 


flowers which it has visited ; but this idea is more poetical than accurate, 
bees, as before observed, flying straight to their hives from great distances. 
Here, as I have more than once had occasion to remark in similar instances, 
we have to regret the want of more correct entomological information in 
the poet, who might have employed with as much effect, the real fact of 
bees distinguishing their own hives out of numbers near them, when cgn- 
ducted to the spot by instinct. This recognition of home seems clearly 
the result of memory; and it is remarkable that bees appear to recollect 
their own hive rather from its situation, than from any observations on the 
hive itself!: just as a man is guided to his house from his memory of 
its position relative to other buildings or objects, without its being neces- 
sary for him even to cast a look at it. If, after quitting my house in a 
morning, it were to be lifted out of its site in the street by enchantment, 
and replaced by another with a similar entrance, I should probably, even 
in the daytime, enter it, without being struck by the change; and bees, if 
during their abscence their old hive be taken away, and a similar one set 
in its place, enter this last; and if it be provided with brood-comb con- 
tentedly take up their abode in it, never troubling themselves to inquire 
what has become of the identical habitation which they left in the morn- 
ing, and with the inhabitants of which, if it be removed to fifty paces 
distance, they never resume their connection.? If, pursuing my illustra- 
tion, you should object that no man would thus contentedly sit down in a 
new house without searching after the old one, you must bear in mind that 
I am not aiming to show that bees have as precise a memory as ours, but 
only that they are endowed with some portion of this faculty, which I 
think the above fact proves. Should you view it in a different light, you 
will not deny the force of others that have already been stated in the 
course of our correspondence: such as the mutual greetings of ants of 
the same society when brought together after a separation of four months ; 
and the return of a party of bees in spring to a window where in the pre- 
ceding autumn they had regaled on honey, though none of this substance 
had been again placed there.? 

But the most striking fact, evincing the memory of these last-mentioned 
insects, has been communicated to me by my intelligent friend Mr. William 
Stickney, of Ridgemont, Holderness. About twenty years ago, a swarm 
from one of this gentleman’s hives took possession of an opening beneath 


1 If a hive be removed out of its ordinary position, the first day after this removal the 
bees do not fly to a distance without having visited all the neighboring objects. The queen 
does the same thing when flying into the air for fecundation. (Huber, Recherches sur les 
Fourmis, 100.) 

2 See the account of the mode in which the Favignanais increase the number of their 
hives by thus dividing them. (Huber, ii. 459.) 

3 A remarkable fact, proving at once that insects are endowed with memory, association 
of ideas, and the sense of hearing, has been recorded by M. Goureau, the author of the 
valuable observations on the stridulation of insects, before referred to in treating of their 
noises. He kept for several days a praying mantis (M. religiosa) in a box, and fed it with 
flies. On first placing it in its new abode he irritated it with a pen, and at the same time 
gave a slight whistle. Apparently fearing an enemy, it put itself in a state of defence, 
reared up its long thorax, placed its fore-feet as if to seize its prey, and half expanded its 
wings and elytra, rubbing its abdomen repeatedly against their sides, so as to produce a 
noise like that of parchment. “From the first moment (continues M. Goureau) to the last 
day that I kept it, every time thatI visited it and gave the same slight whistle it assumed ~ 
its defensive attitude, and did not quit it till it judged the danger past.” (Ann. Soc. Ent. de 
France, x. bull. xviii.) 


600 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 


the tiles of his house, whence, after remaining a fewshours, they were dis- 
lodged and hived. For many subsequent years, when the hives descended 
from this stock were about to swarm, a considerable party of scouts were 
observed for a few days before to be reconnoitering about the old hole 
under the tiles ; and Mr. Stickney is persuaded that if suffered they would 
have established themselves there. He is certain that for eight years 
successively the descendants of the very stock that first took possession of 
the hole frequented it as above stated, and not those of any other swarms ; 
having constantly noticed them, and ascertained that they were bees from 
the original hive by powdering them while about the tiles with yellow 
ochre, and watching their return. And even at the present time there 
are still seen every swarming season about the tiles bees, which Mr. 
Stickney has no doubt are descendants from the original stock. 

Had Dr. Darwin been acquainted with this fact, he would have adduced 
it as proving that insects can convey traditionary information from one 
generation to another; and at the first glance the circumstance of the 
descendants of the same stock retaining a knowledge of the same fact for 
twenty years, during which period there must have been as many genera- 
tions of bees, would seem to warrant the inference. But as it is more 
probable that the party of surveying scouts of the first generation was the 
next year accompanied by others of a second, who in like manner conducted 
their brethren of the third, and these last again others of the fourth 
generation, and so on,—I draw no other conclusion from it than that bees 
are endowed with memory, which I think it proves most satisfactorily. 

Iam, &c. 


THE END. 


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ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD. 


; VOLUME I, 

Madeira Sledge. — Takweani. Height of Waves. camac. 
Curral, Madeira. Caffre Proper. Porpoise and Schooner Church at Banos. 
Peasant’s House. Tattooing. separating. Fountain, Lima. 
Wine-Carriers. Nyambana. Cape Horn. Low Coral Island. 
Wine-Press. Mudjana. Relief at Noir Island. Section of Coral Island. 
Madeira Boat. Corcovado, Rio Janeiro. Music. Canoe. 
Porto Praya. Slaves Sleeping. Taking Grass to Market. Head of Native. 
Watering Place, Porto Palace. Cordilleras, Chili. Natives. 

Praya. Estancia. Peasant’s House. Native Hut. 
Coffee-Casriers. ‘Guacho. Market Place, St. Jago. Tattooing. 
Music. Parhelion. Viga of the Concon. Double Canoe. 
Mina, Negro. Mirage. Ox-Cart. One-Handed Chief. 
Tattooings. Mirage. Stirrups, Spurs, &c. Native of Paumotu 
Ashantee. Patagonians. Hearse. ‘ Group. 
Tattooings. Fuegian Paddles. Pizarro’s Autograph. - Coral Blocks. 
Mundjola. Orange Harbour. Amancaes, Peru. High Coral Island. 
Tattooings. Native Fuegian. Gateway, Lima. Costume. 
Benguelan. Fuegians and Canoe. House, Lima. Dean’s Island. 
Congo Negro. Fuegian Hut. Cooking at Casa Cancha. Trading Canoe. 
Kasangi. Music. Plan of Pasco. Diagram of a Base-Line 
Tattooing. Music. Temple, Pachacamac. by Sound. 
Makuan. Native Hut. Ground Plan of Pacha- Diagram of Survey. 

VOLUME It. 

Swinging, Tahiti. Fans, Baskets, Native throwing the Aurora Australis. 
Paofai. ‘Ohwa Tree. € Boomereng. Tabular Iceberg. 
Common Tahitian Ca- Music. ; Flight of the Boome- Inclined Iceberg. 

noe. Music. reng. Iceberg. 
Native House, Tahiti. Papalangi Ship. Native Weapons and Ice-Island. 
Tahitian Girl with the Devil Man. Shield. Porpoise in a Gale. 

Hau. Samoan Girl. MWGill. Auckland Isles. 
Male Costume, Tattooing. New Holland Boy. Aurora Australis. 
Music. Samoan Canoe. Settler’s Cottage, N. Iceberg. 
Trading Canoe, Music. Ss. W. New Zealand Pa. 
Fishery, Tahiti, Samoan House. Daisy Bank. New Zealand Carving. 
Eimeo, Samoan Pet Pigeon. Macquare Island. Pomare’s House. 
Beating sy Acrostichum Grande. _Land and Field-Ice. Woman and Child, N. Z. 
Harbour of Pago-Pago. Native Hut, N.S. W. Peacock Bay. New Zealand Girl. 
Music. Native of Australia. Iceberg. New Zealand Thu and 
Navigator Clubs, &c. Music. Diagram. Weapons. ; 
Apolima. Music. Vincennes in a Storm. 

VOLUME Iii. 

Parhelia. Music. Tui Levuka. Mbure-House. 
Tonga Fence. Rotuma Chief. Music. Feejee Oracle. 
Tonga Gateway. Native of Tonga. Tanoa’s Canoe. Cannibal Cooking-Pots- 
King George’s House. Native of Erromago. Ava Bowls, &c. Mbure-House. 


Mat-Screen. Canoe-House. Feejee Girl. Vendovi. 


Feejee Baskets, &c. 


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United States Exploring Expedition.—Conlinued. 


ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD. 
VOLUME Iil.—Continued. 


Thokanauto. Henrietta’s House. 
Wailevu, or Peale’s Ri- Front of House. 
ver. Dillon’s Rock. 
Drinking Vessels. — Music. 
Head-dress of Chiefs. | Asaua Woman. 
Feejee Clown. Feejee Arms. 
Music. ~ Henry’s Island. 
Waicama, Feejee. Diagram, Malolo. 
Wild Feejee Man. 
Feejee Drum. 
Upper Town, Somu- 


Feejee Woman. 
Muthuata, Feejee. 


Somu. Feejee Canoe. 
Chiet’s House. Feejee Pottery. 
Monument. Cooking-Jars. 


Feejee Drummer. 


Mode of Drinking. 
Woman Braiding. 


Mode of Sitting. 


Maloma. Mode of Sitting. 
Airou. Likus. 
Toka. Feejee Wigs, &c. 
Ula. Mode of Carrying Bur- 
Mode of Building Hou- dens. 
Bes. 


Street, Honolulu. 


VOLUME Iv. 


Stone Quoits, &c. Blowing Cone. 


Indian Dice. Indian Lodge. 


Poe-Eating. Cattle-Pen. Mission House. Mounds. 
Cook’s Monument. Wailuku Falls. Fishing Huts. Fish-Hooks. 
Calabashes. Edible Fern. Dalles. Mount Rainier. 
Pendulum Peak. Native House. Child’s Heads. Mount Rainier. 
Keaweehu. Fish-Hooks. Fort Wallawalla. Indian Baskets. 
Lava Jet. Chikeeles Fishery. Indian Costume, (Male). Mat Hut. 
Lava Flow. Fort Vancouver. Indian Costume, (Fe- Tatouche Chief. 
Sand-Hills. Rocking Cradle. male). De Fuca’s Pillar. 
Pandanus Tree. Falls of the Willamette. Music. 

VOLUME VY. 


Union Island Canoe. 
Bowditch Islander. 


Makin Islander. 
Kingsmill Arms. 


Drill. Inhabitant of Makin. 
Trading Scene, Apia. Kingsmill Idol. 
Matetau. Ramsey. 

Bowditch Islanders. George. 


Ellice’s Islander. 
Costume, Ellice’s Group. 


Carved Planks. 


Drummond’s Islander. dians, 
Drummond’s Island Pipes, Northwest 
Warriors. dians. 
Kingsmill Canoe. Hats, Northwest Coast. 
Woman, Drummond’s Fish-weir. 
Island. Pounding Acorns. 


Girl, Peru Island. Indians Gambling. 


Masks, Northwest In- Japanese. 


In- Rice Stacks, Luzon. 


Pack-saddles, &c. 
Indian Burial Place. 
Callapuya Indian. 
Umpqua Indian Girl. 
Sacramento Indian. 
Shaste Hut. 
Vincennes on Bar. 


Sword, Manilla. 
Hatchet, Manilla. 
Environs, Manilla. 
Saraboa, Manilla. 
Caldera Fort. 
Sooloo Canoe. 
Houses, Soung. 
Riding, Sooloo. 
Sooloo Arms. 
Gentoo Monument, 
Hottentots. 
Refraction. 
Longwood, St. Helena. 
Cape of Good Hope. 


Banea, Manilla. 


Native of Luzon. 
Manilla Costume. 
Manilla Banca. 
Negrito Boy. 


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the pub- 


private, throughout the country.”’—N. Y. Spirit 
of the Times. 


*€ No library can possibly be complete without a 
copy of it. The octavo edition is extremely rea- 
sonable, considering the value of the work, and 
the elegant style in which it is got up.»—WN. Y. 
Herald. 

**The work, while its details may be relied 
upon as every way faithful, possesses all the 
charms of a romance. It is written in an agree- 
able, captivating, yet unpretending style—and the 
illustrations are admirably adapted to impart ad- 
ditional attraction.°°—Pennsylvania Inquirer. 


‘< But the intrinsic value of the work is derived 
from its contents, the incidents of the voyage and 
the reflections made upon them. The topics 
embraced in the narrative are multifarious and 
of permanent importance ;—commercial, geo- 
graphical, physical, hydrographical, medical, sta- 
tistical, physical and ethnographical. The natu- 
ral sciences will be indebted to these volumes 
for many new and yaluable facts, and the obser- 
vations upon the various mission establishments 
visited by the expedition will prove of vast im- 
portance, not only to all who take an interest in 
such enterprizes, but to the world at large.”°— 
N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 


6 LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATI 


NS. 


ae Ee 
United States Exploring Expedition.—Continued. 


<¢ Even at the reduced price, “¢ The Exploring 
Expedition” is one of the most elegant works 
ever issued from the American press.’’—Boston 
Post. 

«© We promise ourselves a rich treat in the pe- 
rusal of this work—containing the history of an 
Expedition, honourable in its conception and 
execution to the intelligence and munificence of 
our government, and prolific in its results of nau- 
tical and scientifieal information of the most vari- 
ed, interesting and valuable kind. What library, 
private or public in our country, would be com- 
plete without it.’*—Charleston Courier. 

«< The cost of this edition is only TEN DOLLARs, 
or two dollars a volume, a low price, consider- 
ing the magnitude, execution, and value of the 
work. It is worthy of a place in every library 
in the Jand, and its pages should be familiar to 
all. In Europe, as well as in this country, it has 
attracted a great deal of attention.”X—Hartford 
Daily Courant. 

“ This work is got up in the usual splendid 
style of these gentlemen, and is most creditable 
tothem. The paper, type and engravings, are 
all of the best, of the latter, particularly, we have 
never seen an illustrated work, English or Ame- 
rican, in which the engravings are so universally 
first rate. No family should be without this 
work. Another large edition is published at 
$25.°—Lady’s Book. 

«< We have still to notice what we consider asthe 
most valuable portion of the work, and which of 
itself is an ample return for all the expense in- 
curred by the nation in the prosecution of the 
undertaking; we allude to the chapter on currents 
and whaling grounds. We cannot too highly re- 
commend the subject embraced in this chapter 
to the attention of the mercantile public, and 
more especially to that portion of it engaged in 
the whale trade. We cannot conclude without 
giving our meed of praise to the manner in which 
these volumes have been got up, both as regards 
their typography, and the numerous illustrations 
with which they are adorned; these are truly ex- 
cellent, and may be cited as the best proof of the 
advanced state of the arts in the United States. 
The narrative itself is told in a clear and engag- 
ing manner, and is exceedingly rich in almost 
every topic that can gratify public curiosity.”— 
Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine. 

“* The contents of this work are of the deepest 
and most general interest. Aside from the gene- 
ral desire to become acquainted with the actual 
condition of the earth which we inhabit, the nar- 
rative is closely connected with the pursuits of 
all in any way interested in commerce, in the 
various missionary undertakings by which the 
present age is distinguished, or in any pursuit of 
a wide and liberal scope. As a history of per- 
sonal adventure, it has all the attraction of ro- 
mance; while it derives a far higher value from 
the addition it has made to our knowledge of 
lands and seas, and men and things in regionsof 
the earth which have ‘hitherto been covered in 
obscurity. Itis a book which every one should 
have, and with the contents of which every one 
should be familiar.°—N. Y. Courier and Eng. 

«Tt is almost superfluous to remark that Lieu- 
tenant WILKEs’ narrative is one of absorbing in- 
terest. The specimens which have been hereto- 
fore submitted to the public, prove that it pos- 
sesses almost the fascination of romance. To 
say nothing of the numerous scientific problems 


elucidated in its pages, the details of adventure, 


incidents, hair-breadth escapes, imminent perils 


and voyages to regions little known and hardly 
ever explored, are alone sufficient to invest these 
volumes with uncommon attraction. In the pre- 
sent form they can be disposed of at a price 
within the means of thousands and they will doubt. 
less meet with a ready sale.*°—N. O, Bee. 

‘‘ We have adverted to the general character 
of this work in our notice of some of the preced- 
ing volumes, and we can truly say that each 
successive volume has only confirmed our very 
high estimate of its value.°—Albany Argus. 

‘It is as minute and as agreeable as any book 
oftravels we have read, while the character of 
the investigations and discoveries lend a value 
and interest to the volume which the narrative 
of no private traveler could give.*°—Utica Ob- 
server. 

‘< With all these omissions, this edition is really 
a sumptuous one, and will be an ornament to 
any library, while the reading matter will be 
found to be eminently interesting and instruc- 
tive.*°—Buffalo Commercial Advertiser. 

‘¢ The inexhaustible fund of information seat- 
tered through its pages of countries hitherto but 
little explored and unfrequented, its yaluable ac- 
cession to our knowledge of Natural History, in 
the departments of Zoology, Mineralogy, Botany 
and Geology, together with the carefully drawn 
sketches of the customs, religion, literature, po- 
pulation, resources, &c., of various nations of 
whom we have had but slight information, should 
claim for this authenticated and accurate narra- 
tive a place in every public and private library. 
It is written in a terse and agreeable style, clear 
and perspicuous, is beautifully and faithfully exe- 
cuted, doing credit to all, both publishers and 
author, and will constitute a rich and yaluable 
contribution to our stock of American literature. 
The embellishments in this edition, to the num- 
ber of 300, are executed in the best style. of 
wood engraving, faithfully delineating numerous 
objects described by the author, and not only 
ornament the book but render it far more ac- 
ceptable and valuable than it would be other- 
wise.’’— Baptist Record. 

‘* We congratulate our readers upon the issue 
of this edition, which will enable every body to 
read the work, and almost every body to own it. 
It is sufficient to look over the table of contents 
to be convinced that this work will furnish the 
reader with abundant amusement and instruc- 
tion.»*—Saturday Evening Post. 

‘* This great National work is one that every 
American must ic2] an exultation of pride in 
perusing—not only in view of the fact that so 
much has been accomplished, but that it has been 
done by American citizens; and so effectually 
done. And it is with great pride that we per- 
ceive that the acts and doings of the Expedition 
have been ‘‘ got up” totally and completely 
AMERICAN in all and every part. No library 
can be complete without Wilkes’ Narrative.??— 
Lancaster Am. Republican. 

*¢ A great National work of this kind should be 
in all our libraries, private and public; it con- 
tains a vast deal of scientific and geographical 
information, and must become a work of author- 
ity and reference.’*—Protestant Churchman. 

‘¢ But the books undoubtedly have a great and 
varied interest, and should be seen and read by 
as many as possible of the people of the United 


* 


, , 4 
* LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS. 


¥ 


United States Exploring Expedition.—Continued. 


States. They not only give us descriptions of all 
sorts of men and manners and places encounter- 
ed in this vast traverse of the globe, but they pre- 
sent to the country a worthy view of a great and 
honourable Nartronat work.??—Portland (Me.) 
Advertiser. 

s* As it brings the reader into contact with 
various nations, portrays their habits and cus- 
toms, describes the appearance of many objects 
of interest, refers to natural history, in its several 
departments, and depicts many thrilling adven- 
tures, it cannot but be deeply interesting. It is 
a work not only to amuse, but to afford substan- 
tial information.’*—Presbyterian. 

<¢ Tt will form a most valuable addition to the 
library of every student—containing a mass of 
scientific information, and many interesting de- 
tails of trayel and voyage.””—Philad. Gazette. 

‘¢ The Expioring Expedition was an enterprise 
of great importance, and a detail of the results 
accomplished, is a matter in which every Ameri- 
can must feel the greatest interest, both for the 
sake of valuable practical science and for the 
credit of the country, under whose flag this ex- 
ploration was conducted.’’—Neal’s Saturday Ga- 
zette. ; 

“< This work is the first great National one 
ever published by us, and will be an enduring 
monument of the liberality and enterprise of our 
government, and which, not less than the im- 
portance of the discoveries to science and civili- 
zation, made by the explorers, should cause it to 
be highly prized by our citizens. The first 
volume of the new edition, which is just published, 
is a splendid one; it is on good paper and is 
handsomely bound, and by this reduction in the 
price, is placed within the reach of many who 


would not be able to purchase the first edition.” 
—Utica Observer. 

<< As the first scientific expedition fitted out by 
our government, every American must feel inte- 
rested in its results; and we take pleasure in 
saying that the author and publishers haye pro- 
duced a book worthy of the country.’’—Banner 
of the Cross. 

‘‘It is printed in handsome style, on good 
paper, and makes an elegant volume. The 
wood cut engravings are well executed, and ad- 
mirably illustrate various objects and scenes of 
deep interest to the reader. The Narrative is a 
worthy memorial of the noble enterprise, exhi- 
biting graphic descriptions of scenery, laws, 
manners, customs, and the various phenomena 
which came under his observation, in a style and 
form which entitle it to the cordial approbation 
of his countrymen.’’—Christian Observer. 

‘<The great extent of the world traversed— 
the new and unknown islands and countries 
visited—the length of time spent and care taken 
in the examination of all that was new, curious 
and worthy of investigation—the great amount of 
facts given—and the pleasing style of the wark 
—render it by far the most interesting publica- 
tion of theseason. It has additional attractions 
to an American. It is a national work, the his- 
tory of the first, but we hope not the last, Explo- 
ring Expedition sent out by the United States.— 
Their work is ‘* got up’? in beautiful style, good 
paper, large fair type, and is illustrated by ten 
large maps and about three hundred engravings. 
It. is published in five large octavo volumes, 
at the very low price of two dollars per volume.°? 
—Pittsburgh Morning Chronicle, 


L. & B. ALSO PUBLISH AND HAVE FOR SALE, 
A SPLENDID EDITION OF 


THE NARRATIVE 


OF THE 


EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 


Price Twenty-Five Dollars, 


IN FIVE MAGNIFICENT IMPERIAL OCTAVO VOLUMES; 
WITH AN ATLAS OF LARGE AND EXTENDED MAPS. 
BEAUTIFULLY DONE UP IN EXTRA CLOTH. 


This truly Great and National Work is issued in a Style of Superior Magnifi- 
cence and Beauty, containing 
Sixty-Four Large and Finished Line Engravings, 


EMBRACING 
SCENERY, PORTRAITS, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, &c., &c. 


FORTY-SEVEN EXQUISITE STEEL VIGNETTES, 


' WORKED AMONG THE LETTER-PRESS ; ABOUT 


Two Kiundred and Fifty Finely Executed Wood-Cut 


Httustrations, 


FOURTEEN LARGE AND SMALL MAPS AND CHARTS, 
AND NEARLY 


Twenty-Six Hundred Pages of Letterpress, 


It may safely be pronounced the most splendid work ever issued in this 
country, and the satisfaction which it everywhere occasions, is enhanced from 


the fact of its being purely national. 


Great care has been taken that everything 


concerned in its preparation should be wHotty American, and the result has 
been such as to elicit the highest tribute of praise from all who have seen it, 


both in this country,and in England. 


s 


LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS, 


United States Exploring Expedition.—Conlinued. 


‘©Tt is quite equal to any of the handsomest 
publications of the kind that have issued from 
our own press. Our eyes,so Jong spoiled by the 
typographical excellence of our own printers, are 
no longer caught by mere excellence in printing ; 
but when we see a beautiful page in our own Jan- 
guage, with the imprimatur, ‘ Printed by C. Sher- 
inan, Philadelphia, U. S. A.,? we must confess a 
feeling of novelty is given to an otherwise fami- 
liar and ordinary object. Not only printing and 
paper are first rate, but the illustrations are in 
the best possible taste, and in great profusion.—- 
If such beautiful works are wafted over the At- 
Jantic by every steamer, (and such an event is 
not far from a probability,) Paternoster Row and 
Albemarle street must be on the look-out for a 
stout rivalry.”’--Douglas Jerrold’s Magazine, 
(London). 

‘¢ We should be doing an injustice tothe press 
of the United States, did we not say in conclud- 
ing forthe present ourremarks on these volumes, 
which were printed in Philadelphia, thatin paper 
and typography they may take rank with the best 
productions of the British press. The numerous 
illustrations, too, whether plates, vignettes, wood 
cuts, er charts and maps, are creditable to all the 
artists, both draughtsmen and engravers, engaged 
in their execution.’’—London Times. 

«¢ We have seen a volume of the book, or Nar- 
rative of the Exploring Expedition. It equals al] 
the most enthusiastic admirers of the superlatively 
beautiful in the arts can wish; itis a credit to the 
country, and honourable to all who have been 
engaged in the work.’?-—Southern Literary Mes- 
senger. 

‘¢ The publishers’ part of the work, as we have 
said in a former notice, has been done with emi- 
nent taste and skill. The paper and type are of 
surpassing excellencc, and the profusely nume- 
rous engravings exhibit a condition of the art in 
this country far superior to what we had supposed. 
In this first volume there are no less than eighty- 
six illustrations, including finished engravings on 
steel, etchings and wood cuts; and among them 
all there is not one of inferior character, either 
indesign or execution, while many, presenting 
subjects of rare beauty, may bear comparison 
with the finest works of the graver produced in 
any country.”°—N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 

‘© It certainly is one which will hereafter be 
considered indispensable to the library, not only 
of every public institution throughout the country, 
but of every private person of taste and ability to 
procure it. Notthe least of its recommendations 
is the fact, that nothing whatever has been used 
in its preparation, not STRICTLY AMERICAN; and 


it thus forms one of the most authentic, as well 
as the most elegant and magnificent, productions 
of American enterprise and American art.’’-—N. 
Y. Courier and Enquirer. F 

‘*It comprises five large imperial octavo vo- 
jumes, printed in clear, distinct type, upon paper 
of the strongest texture and most perfect white- 
ness, with a broad and rich margin, and a luxury 
of general appearance, usually found only in 
English books. It contains sixty-four large and 
very elegant line engravings, presenting the most 
interesting scenery, and the most picturesque in- 
cidents met with during the cruise, with very spi- 
rited illustrations of the manners, customs, &c., 
&c., of the inhabitants of the wild and distant 
regions which were visited. These engravings 
are from drawings made by the artists of the Ex- 
pedition, and are executed by some of our most 
celebrated engravers. They are among the finest 
specimens of the art ever exhibited in this coun- 
try.”°—Cleveland Herald. 

‘“* A work altogether so beautifully and so per- 
fectly ‘ got up’ as to satisfy the taste of the most 
fastidious. In an artistical and mechanical point 
of view, it is as near perfection as can be, and no 
one can look through this great national work 
without pride and pleasure in the consideration 
of its being purely American, from its incipient 
state to its entire completion.”*—Saturday Post. 

‘¢In style of execution, in paper, type, and in 
its engravings—it is one of the most beautiful, if 
not altogether the most so, of any American pub- 
lication.’*—Boston Atlas. 

«We are greatly in error, if this superb pro- 
duction of the American press do not prove as 
creditable to the country which projected so no- 
ble an enterprise, as the successful issue of the 
undertaking was honourable to the officers and 
sciehtific corps who conducted it. The expedi- 
tion and the narrative are alike an honour to 
America. The printing and paper are of the first 
order, and as specimens of book-making we 
really do not know how these volumes can be 
excelled. We feel assured that it will be no 
breach of national modesty to assert that no coun- 
try has yet produced a book of voyages to com- 
pare with it.°—N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 

‘** This long expected work has at length made 
its appearance, and is beyond all question, the 
most magnificent publication ever got up in this 
country. The paper, typography, engravings, 
and tout ensemble, are worthy of the highest praise 
that can be bestowed on them. We shall, at an 
early day, take occasion to speak of the contents 
of these magnificent volumes.°—N. Y. Courier 
and Enquirer. 


ALSO, STILL ON HAND, 
A FEW COPIES OF THE 


IMPERIAL QUA 


RTO EDITION, 


SRINELD BOR CONERESS2 


Price Sixty 


Dollars, 


But Two Hundred and Fifty Copies of this Magnificent Edi- 


tion were Printed, 


and of these, but 


ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE 
HAVE BEEN OFFERED FOR SALE, 
Af Few of which stilt remain. 


me 


t 


< LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS. 9 


JUST PUBLISHED. 


RUSHWS NEW VOLUME ON ENGLAND. 


MEMORANDA OF A RESIDENCE 
AT THE COURT OF LON DOs s 
COMPRISING INCIDENTS OFFICIAL AND PERSONAL, FROM 1819 TO 1825. 


Including Negotiations on the Oregon Question and other Unsettled Relations between the 
United States and Great Britain. 


BY RICHARD RUSH, 
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States, from 1817 to 1825. 
IN ONE LARGE AND BEAUTIFUL OCTAVO VOLUME oF 640 PAGES, EXTRA CLOTH. 


(<> This is an entirely new volume, and may be considered as a continuation of his 
former work, which attracted so much attention at the time of its publication. 


*<In 1833, twelve years ago, the first series of these entertaining and interesting memoranda 
appeared; and coming from such a source, were so favourably received that we have long won- 
dered at the abstinence which prevented their being more rapidly followed out. Both for their 
political and social matter they belong to a class of reading which it is very desirable to cultivate. 
In the complexion of his mind the author is so moderate‘and just that his international statements 
are worthy of perfect credit; while the position he occupied gave him such opportunities of mixing 
with the best informed portions of society, that his descriptions and anecdotes of them are of a most 
agreeable kind. Thus qualified by a sound understanding, an aeuteness of observation, and a 
temper disposed to pour oil on every troubled water, we have received much gratification from the 
perusal of these two volumes.’°—London Literary Gazette. 

‘¢ We recur with much pleasure to this able and interesting work. It sheds a flood of light on 
the early negotiations upon the Oregon Question, and shows the position assumed by Mr. Monroe, 
when the negotiation was first opened, as well as the views of the Government of the United States 
from that day to this. Mr. Rush has here presented, at a glance, that for which one might other- 
wise be forced to make extensive and laborious researches.?°—Daily Union. 

*« His relations to the contest, and’ his perfect mastery of both sides of it, make him much the 
best witness introduced on either part. Indeed, properly, he is the only witness; the others are 
but counsel. To the entire extent in which he testifies (down to the close of the discussion of 
1823-4), his statements are of the highest authority. Mr. Rush is the only one who has given us 
more than diplomatic and ex-officio pleadings, who offers, besides, a deliberate and apparently most 
sincere personal narrative of the entire negotiation, in which he obviously endeavours to speak as 
impartially as he does advisedly, and no doubt puts aside his own national and party prejudices as 
far as any one can be expected to do. So far as he leans at all, it is to our side that he Jeans; he 
is our witness; he is our best informed and fairest witness ; and there is none, therefore, to whom 
it is so fit that we should listen with attention and respect, if we wish to make up a safe opinion 
of our rights.’*—National Intelligencer. 

‘¢ Politicians especially should read this volume, for it sheds a welcome light on the diplomatic 
history of that question; and for its good temper, pleasant style and varied information, is a book 
to be recommended to every body.””—Charleston Mercury. 

*<It cannot fail to be regarded by all persons at all familiar with public men and public events, as 
among the most interesting works of a most interesting class. The formal records of history are 
far less entertaining than these details of the casual conversation, the social habits and the personal 
characteristics of gifted and distinguished men. It is pleasant to witness the playful efforts of a great 
mind: and no one can regard with indifference the most ordinary details connected with those who 
have exerted a wide and a permanent influence upon national affairs. This universal and strongly 
attractive feeling will insure to this very interesting work of Mr. Rush, a wide perusal. The work 
is very handsomely printed in a thick and elegant volume of over 500 pages; and will, of course, 
form part of every library of any pretensions.””—N. Y. Courier and Enquirer. 

‘¢ We have said that the work is not of a historical character strictly—and it is not; but there is 
in it a history most important and valuable to those who would understand the relations of this 
country to England, and how the Oregon and other questions of national interest stood at the time 
of Mr. Rush’s incumbency; and even to the generat reader its valuable stores of anecdote and of 
incidents, in which the most brilliant lights of the English Court figured, will be most acceptable. 
Messrs. Lea & Blanchard have issued the volume in beautiful style, as regards printing and bind- 
ing ; and both in appearance and value the narrative is worth a place in the library of the most fas- 
tidious."—U. S. Gazette. 


NEARLY READY. 
STABLE TALK AND TABLE TALK, 
OR, SPECTACLES FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
BY HARRY HIEOVER. 
In one duodecimo volume. 


This volume contains many amusing sporting Sketches and Anecdotes, embodying much useful 
information and valuable hints in nearly all the departments of English sport. 


‘ . . ’ i” 
10 LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS. 


# 


NOW READY. 


INGERSOLL’S LATE* WAR. 
HISTORICAL SKETCH 


OF THE 


SECOND WAR 


BETWEEN THE 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN, 
DECLARED BY ACT OF CONGRESS, JUNE 18, 1812, 


CONCLUDED BY PEACE, FEBRUARY 15, 1815. 
BY 
CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 


To be Complete in Three Volumes. 
VOLUME I. EMBRACING THE EVENTS OF 1812—1813. 
ONE VOLUME OCTAVO OF 516 PAGES, 
Beautifully Printed, and done up in neat extra cloth, and sold separately. 

The connection with the government which Mr. Ingersoll has enjoyed, owing to his 
seat in Congress at various times, has furnished him with a fund of novel and curious in- 
formation respecting the events of the war and the persons who figured in that stirring 
period. Not only the operations and events of the time, both warlike and political, were 
seen by him, but also the secret springs and movements which directed them, and which 
could only be known to one situated as he was. 

‘¢ We do not remember ever to have read a more striking sketch than the one just preceding.— 
It is of a character with the whole book, and imparts to the style of the writer a degree of unusual 
spirit, making it more like some well-told and ingenious story, than the detail of mere matters of 
fact. We have no doubt that Mr. Ingersoll’s book will be rapidly purchased and eagerly read. 
Men of all parties will admire its frankness, and the numerous rich and long-buried stores of infor- 
mation with which it abounds, Even those who would assail, will pause before views so ably, so 
boldly, and so intelligently expressed, and portraits so critical and just.?*—Daily Union. 

‘¢ There is a freshness in the volume which is peculiar, as the author—being in Congress during 
the period of the war—had opportunities which have rarely been offered to the historian. He was 
intimately connected with the leading men of the administration then existing, and he now relates 
much that passed under his notice. We have no doubt but that the work will be sought with great 
avidity.”—U. S. Gazette. 

‘¢ The History of Mr. Ingersoll, we cannot doubt, will create no little excitement throughout the 
country. The universally interesting nature of the subject, the vigour and ability with which it is 
evidently written, and the manner in which distinguished men, living and dead, were connected 
with the great events it narrates, will combine to give it a very wide circulation. It will be in 
many respects the most marked publication of the day. We can see marks of a vigour of mind, 
a fulness of investigation’ and a striking originality of manner, which cannot fail to make the book 
exceedingly attractive to a very wide circle of readers.?*—N. Y. Courier and Enquirer. 


NEARLY READY. 


THE SPORTSMAN’S LIBRARY. 


BY JOHN MILLS, 
Author of ** The Old English Gentleman.’? 
In one duodecimo volume. 

“Tt has been my object to render this work one of instruction and of reference, as to every sub- 
ject connected with our national sports. In the belief that the task has been completed im accord- 
ance with the design, I submit the work, in all humility, to the favourable consideration of those 
whom I am proud to call my fellow sportsmen.’*—Author’s Preface. 


PREPARING. 
A NEW AND IMPROVED AMERICAN EDITION 


HAWKER ON SHOOTING. 


FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION. 
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 
The Sporting world in this country will be glad to have at Jast presented to them an edition of 
Colonel Hawker’s Standard Work on Shooting. It is well known both here and in England as the 
highest authority on the subjects of which it treats. 


y 
« 


; - 
& LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS. 1 


ie 


Now Ready, : 
EAST’S REPORTS. 


—————_ id 


REPORTS OF CASES 


ADJUDGED AND DETERMINED 


COURT OF KING’S BENCH. 


WITH 


TABLES OF THE NAMES OF THE CASES, AND PRINCIPAL MATTERS. 
BY EDWARD. HYDE EAST, Esa., 


Of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law. 
EDITED, WITH NOTES AND REFERENCES, 
By G. M. WHARTON, ES@, 


OF THE PHILADELPHIA BAR. 
In eight large Royal Octavo volumes, bound in best Law sheep, raised bands and 
double titles. 
PRICE TO SUBSCRIBERS, ONLY TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. 

In this edition of East, the sixteen volumes-of the former edition have been 
compressed into eight—two volumes in one throughout—-but nothing has been 
omitted; the entire work will be found with the notes of Mr. Wharton added 
to those of Mr. Day. The great reduction of price lg $72, the price of the 
last edition, to $25, the subscription price of this) together with the improvement 
in appearance, will, it is trusted, procure for it a ready sale. 

Twenty-seven years have elapsed since the publication of the last American 
Edition of East’s Reports by Mr. Day, and the work has become exceedingly 
scarce. This is the more to be regretted, as the great value of these Reports, 
arising from the variety and importance of the subjects considered in them, and 
the fulness of the decisions on the subjects of Mercantile Law, renders them ab- 
solutely necessary to the American Lawyer. ‘The judgments of Lord Kenyon 
and Lord Ellenborough, on all practical and commercial points, are of the highest 
authority, and the volumes which contain them should form part of every well- 
selected law library. 

These considerations have induced the publishers to have a new and improved 
edition prepared, to supply this obvious deficiency. The editor, G.M. Wharton, 
Esgq., has added brief annotations on the leading Cases of the Reports, with refe- 
rence to the more important decisions upon similar points in the principal com- 
mercial states of the Union. At the head of each case will be found a reference 
to the volume and paging of that case in the English edition; and the original 
Indexes and Tables of Cases have been arranged to refer to the volumes of the 
present edition. 

The work may be had of the Publishers, or of Little & Brown, Boston; Gould, 
Banks & Co., New York; Derby Bradley & Co., Cincinnati, O-; and the prin- 
cipal Booksellers throughout the Union. 


WILL BE READY IN JANUARY. 
A PRACTICAL TREATISE 


LAW. RELATING TO TRUSTEES; 


THEIR POWERS, DUTIES, PRIVILEGES AND LIABILITIES; 
By JAMES HILL, Esa., 


OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. 
Eprrep sy FRANCIS J. TROUBAT, ESQ., 
OF THE PHILADELPHIA BAR. 

There is no work at present before the profession occupying the position of this; and embracing 
so widely and completely the duties and responsibilities of Trustees, and the bearing of the Law of 
Trusts ; and thus, necessarily, involving the consideration of the whole Law of Real and Personal 
Property. 


12 LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS, “te 


HILLIARD ON REAL ESTATE. 


Now in Press, and will be published early in January, 
THE AMERICAN LAW 


REAL ESTATE. 


A NEW, GREATLY ENLARGED AND IMPROVED EDITION. 
BY FRANCIS HILLIARD, 


COUNSELLOR AT LAW. 
In two large octavo volumes, 
Beautifully printed, and bound in best law sheep. 


This book is designed as a substitute for Cruise’s Digest, occupying the same 
position in American Law which that work has so long covered in the English. 
While it contains all that portion of the law of England which is applicable to 
this country, it embodies all the statutes and adjudged cases of all the states of 
the Union, thus presenting a complete elementary treatise for the use of students 
and practitioners in this country. The plan of the work is such as to render it 
equally serviceable IN ALL THE STATES, containing as it does the various 
modifications of the Jaw as laid down for MASSACHUSETTS and MISSOURI, 
for MAINE and LOUISIANA ; thus presenting advantages which are possessed 
by no other treatise on the subject before the public. In this edition are inserted 
the statutes and decisions which are subsequent to the former edition, These 
are very numerous, and render the work at least one third larger than in the 
original form, bringing the view of the law on this subject, down to the present 
time, more fully and completely than isto be found elsewhere. That the author 
has succeeded in his attempt to present this difficult subject in a clear and useful 
form may be seen from the following recommendations from distinguished jurists 
of different states, in respect to the first edition. 

This edition will consist of two large octavo volumes of near eight hundred 
pages each, printed on large type, and with thick white paper, and bound in the 
best style. 

Judge Story says: 

‘¢I think the work a very valuable addition to our present stock of juridical literature. It em- 
braces all that part of Mr. Cruise’s Digest, which is most useful to American lawyers. But its 
higher value is, that it presents in a concise, but clear and exact form, the substance of American 
Law on the same subject. Iknow no work that we possess, whose practical utility is likely to be so 
extensively felt.” ‘* The wonder is, that the author has been able to bring so great a mass into so 
condensed a text, at once comprehensive and lucid.’ 


Chancellor Kent says of the work (Commentaries, Vol. II., p. 635, note, 5th edition): —‘ It is a 
work of great labour and intrinsic value.’ 

The American Jurist says:—‘‘ We have always found {in it] the information we were in search 
of, and the principles correctly and perspicuously stated.*? ‘* The task he imposed upon himself 
was one of great toil, and he has resolutely and manfully performed it, evincing a patience of labor 
worthy of the students and jurists of a former age. ** The lawyer will here find, brought into the 
compass of two reasonable volumes, a vast amount of matter, gathered from many camel-loads of 
text-books, reports, and statutes, correctly stated..°—Jurist, July, 1839. 

Hon. Rufus Choate says;—‘ Mr. Hilliard’s work has been for three or four years in use, and I 
think that Mr. Justice Story and Chancellor Kent express the general opinion of the Massachusetts 
Bar.” 


L. & B, have at Press and will Shortly Publish, 
A TREATISE ON THE 


LAW OF CONTRACTS 


AND ON 
PARTIES TO ACTIONS, EX CONTRACTU. 
BY C. G. ADDISON, ESQ., 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. 
With Notes and Additions, adapted to American Practice. 


| " | . 
STANDARD LIBRARY b 


WORKS ON HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &e 


TO BE PUBLISHED BY 
LEA AND BLANCHARD. 


Ir has been suggested that the publishers might render an acceptable service to literature by 
the publication, in a form for preservation, and at low prices, of a series of STANDARD works 
on History, Biography, &c. 

Many valuable works of this class are out of print in this country, and many new and interest- 
ing ones have been published in Great Britain, which should be republished here and added to 
our many private and public libraries. 

Though satisfied that valuable works of this class should be multiplied by republication, L. & 
B. have heretofore hesitated to reproduce them, from the fact, that the comparison of the prices 
that must be charged for such works with the very low prices asked for novels and light litera- 
ture, seemed a barrier to the presentation of those, which, from their limited sales, must neces- 
sarily be charged higher—they trust, however, that the time has arrived when a moderate 
edition of such works will meet with adequate support. 

Several of them are now at press, and others are preparing, which will be published in an 
octavo form, in double columns, on good paper, and with good readable type. Any work will 
be sold separately and at moderate prices. 


Among the volumes embraced in this series, will be found the following valuable works: 


THE HISTORY OF ROME: 
BY G, B. NIEBUHR. 


Complete in Two Large Octavo Volumes, done up in Extra Cloth, or Five Parts 
in paper, price $1 00 each part. 


TRANSLATED BY 


JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M. A, WILLIAM SMITH, PH. D 
CONNOP THIRLWALL, M. A. LEONHARD SCHMITZ, PH. D. 
WITH A MAP. 


The last three parts of this invaluable book have never before been published in this country, 
having only lately been printed in Germany, and translated in ngland. They complete the history, 
bringing it down to the time of Constantine, 

‘The world has now in Niebuhr an imperishable model.”"—ZEdinburgh Review, Jan. 1844. 

“The History of Niebuhr has thrown new light on our knowledge ot Roman afiairs, toa degree of which 
those unacquainted with it can scarcely form an idea.”—Quarlerly Review. 

This edition will comprise in the fourth and fifth volumes, the Lectures of Professor Niebuhr, on the latter 
part of Roman History, so long lost to the world, Concerning them the Eclectic Review says: 

“It is an unexpected surprise and pleasure to the admirers of Nicbuhr—that is to all earnest students of 
ancient history—to recover, as if from the grave, the lectures before us.” 

And the London Atheneum: 

“ We have dwelt at sufficient length on these volumes to show how highly we appreciate the benefits 
which the editor has conferred on historical literature by their publication.” 

“These volumes will offer what has never before been presented to the public of this country—the great 
work of Niebuhr, confessedly the master-piece of historical inquiry in modern times, in a complete form, for 
only two of the volumes now prepared haye appeared among us. Next to Gibbon’s matchless book—the 
vastest monument of historic toil ever raised—the consent of all critics must place these remarkable volumes, 
the learning of which is crowned by a skill in the philosophy of institutions and events such as has never 
before been applied to the regular elucidation of the obscurer times of an important body of annals.”—WVa- 
tional Intelligencer, 


MILLS’ CRUSADES. 


THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES 
FOR THE RECOVERY AND POSSESSION OF THE HOLY LAND: 
BY CHARLES MILLS. 
In one part, paper, price $1.00. 


PDR 


MILLS’ CHIVALRY. 
THE HISTORY OF CHIVALRY; 


OR 


KNIGHTHOOD AND ITS TIMES: 
BY CHARLES MILLS. 
In one part, paper, price $1.00. 
Also, the two works, Crusades and Chivalry, in one volume, extra cloth. 


Oe 


; 


PUBLISHING BY LEA & BLANCHARD 


AS PART OF 


THE LIBRARY OF STANDARD LITERATURE. 


PROFESSOR RANKE’S HISTORICAL WORKS. 
HISTORY. OF THE POPES, 


THEIR CHURCH AND STATE, { 
IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: 
BY LEOPOLD RANKE. 
TRANSLATED FROM THE LAST EDITION OF THE GERMAN, BY WALTER K. KELLY, ESQ., B. A. 
In two parts, paper, at $1.00 each, or one large volume extra cloth, 
This edition has translations of the Notes and Appendices, 


‘A book extraordinary for its learning and impartiality, and for its just and liberal views of 
the times it describes. The best compliment that can be paid to Mr. Ranke, is, that each side 
has accused him of partiality to its opponent; the German Protestants complaining that his 
work is written in too Catholic a spirit ;—the Catholics declaring, that generally impartial as he 
is, it is clear to perceive the Protestant tendency of the history.”"—London Times. 


THE TURKISH AND SPANISH EMPIRES, 
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY AND BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH. 


BY PROFESSOR LEOPOLD RANKE. 
TRANSLATED FROM THE LAST EDITION OF THE GERMAN, 
BY WALTER K. KELLY, ESQ. 
Complete in one part, paper, price 75 cents. 
This work was published by the author in connexion with the “ History of the Popes,” under the name 


of “Sovereigns and Nations of Southern Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Jt may be 
used separately, or bound up with that work, for which purpose two titles will be found in it. 


HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY: 


BY PROFESSOR LEOPOLD RANKE, 
Parts First and Second now ready. Price Twenty-Five cents each. 
TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND EDITION BY SARAH AUSTIN, 

To be completed in about Five Parts, each Part containing one volume of the London edition. 

“Few modern writers possess such qualifications for doing justice to so great a subject as Leopold Ranke. 
Indefatigable in exertions, he revels in the toil of examining archives and state papers; honest in purpose, 
he shapes his theories from evidence; not like D'Aubigne, whose romance of the Reformation selects evi- 
dence to support preconceived theory. Ranké never forgets the statesman in the theologian, or the historian 
in the partisan.”"—Atheneum. 

This book will conclude the series of Professor Ranké’s valuable historical works. 


A HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS: 


A NEW EDITION, CONTINUED TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
BY W. S. BROWNING, 


The object of this work is to give a clear detail of the circumstances connected with the toubles 
generally called the Religious wars of France. Those events are interwoven with our own his- 
tory, and are frequently referred to in the present time. Among the many works which relate to 
the Huguenots, there is scarcely one that comprises the whole in a connected narrative; and not 
one, in the English language at least, which is exclusively historical, and divested of all theological 
discussion. In the present edition, the progress of events is traced to the present time, comprehend- 
ing the fullest account as yet given of the tragical proceedings at Nismes, on the restoration of the 
Bourbons in 1815, 


MEMOIRS OF THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE THE THIRD: 
BY HORACE WALPOLE, 


YOUNGEST SON OF SIR ROBERT WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD, 
Now first published from the original MSS. 


EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY SIR DENIS LE MARCHANT, BART. 


“These Memoirs comprise the first twelve years of the reign of George the Third, and close the his- 
torical works of Horace Walpole. ‘ Of their merits,’ to use the words of Lord Holland, ‘ it would be impro- 
per to enlarge upon in this place. That they contain much curious and original information, will not be 
disputed.’ In common with the memoirs of George the Second, they treat of a part of our annals most im- 
perfectly Known to us, with the decided advantage of the period being one marked with events of a deeper 
interest, and more congenial in their character and bearings with those which have since engaged and still 
occupy our attention.”’— Preface of the Editor 

L. & B. have stil! on hand a few copies of Walpole’s Early Letters, in four large octavo volumes, and 
also of his Suppressed Letters to Sir Horace Mann, in two octavo volumes. These volumes will possess 
peculiar interest to the American reader from their containing numerous notices of the early discontent# 
in this country, resulting in the Revolution. 


STANDARD LIBRARY CONTINUED. 


eS a ee eee 


WALPOLE’S NEW LETTERS. 


THE LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD, TO 
SIR HORACE MANN, His Britannic Majesty’s Resident at the Court of 
Florence, from 1760 to 1785. Now first: published from the original MSS. 
In four parts, paper, at One Dollar each, or two handsome octavo volumes, cloth. 

It was believed that the immediate descendants of some of Walpole’s curious anecdotes and racy gossip 


might be pained by their early publication, and thus the wit of the dead has been restrained until the living 
should no longer be wounded by its piquancy. 


HISTORICAL MEMOIRS OF MY OWN TIMES, by Sir N. William 
Wraxall. In two parts, paper, or one volume extra cloth. 

This is the work for which, in consequence of his portraiture of Catherine IL., 
the author was imprisoned and fined. 


“ Wraxall is one of the most amusing hoarders of Anecdotes of public men since the days of the memo- 
rable Boswell. These memoirs are distinguished for their refinement as well as the abundance of original 
anecdotes which they contain of all the personages of the day most remarkable for profound talent, for wit, 
or for beauty.” —Blackwood’s Magazine. 


POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF HIS OWN TIMES, by Sir N. William 
Wraxall. In two parts, paper, at seventy-five cents each, or one volume extra 
cloth. 


The author assigns a good reason for making these Memoirs ‘‘ Posthumous.” ‘Taught by the experience of 
his former series of Memoirs, that those in power dislike their secret intrigues to be laid open, he took the 
only plan to avoid the effects of their inevitable anger, and not only prevented the appearance of these 
interesting and amusing Memoirs during his life, but took care that they should not appear till after the 
decease of George IV, then Prince Regent. The matters which made the work dangerous to the author, 
sender it peculiarly attractive to the reader. 


L. & B. HAVE JUST PUBLISHED 


THE SEVENTH VOLUME OF MISS STRICKLAND'’S QUEENS OF ENGLAND, containing 
the completion of the Life of Queen Elizabeth, and the Life of Anne of Deninark, done up to 
match the six volumes already published in green cloth or lemon-coloured paper. 


THE KITCHEN AND FRUIT GARDENER, to match the Complete Florist, price 25 Cents. 


RELIGIO MEDICI; ITS SEQUEL, CHRISTIAN MORALS, by Sir Thomas Browne, Kt.M.D., 
with resemblant passages from Cowper’s Task, and a verbal Index. Edited by John Pearce; in 
one volume, 12mo., a neat edition. 


THE EIGHTH VOLUME OF MISS STRICKLAND’S LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENG- 
LAND; containing Henrietta Maria, and Catherine of Braganza. To match the volumes 
already published. 


EVERY MAN HIS OWN CATTLE DOCTOR; containing the Diseases of Oxen, Sheep, and 
Swine, and the Anatomy and Physiology of Neat Cattle. By Francis Clater; revised by William 
Youatt. Edited, with numerous additions, by J.S. Skinner. With numerous Cuts; in one 12mo. 
volume. 


EVERY MAN HIS OWN FARRIER;; containing the Causes, Symptoms, and Methods of Cure 
of the Diseases of Horses, by Francis Clater and John Clater. From the 28th London edition. 
By J. S. Skinner; in one 12mo, volume. 


THE DOG AND THE SPORTSMAN;; embracing the Uses, Breeding, Training, Diseases, &c., 
&c., of Dogs. An account of the Different Kinds of Game, with their Habits; also, Hints to 
Shooters, with various useful Recipes; by J.S. Skinner. In one neat 12mo. volume, with En- 
gravings. 

REMARKS ON THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL EXCITEMENT, AND MENTAL CULTI. 
VATION UPON HEALTH; by A. Brigham, M.D. Third edition ; one volume, 18mo, 


HUMAN HEALTH. 


HUMAN HEALTH; or the Influence of Atmosphere and Locality, Change of Air and Climate, 
Seasons, Food, Clothing, Bathing, Mineral Springs, Exercise, Sleep, Corporeal and Mental Par- 


suits, &c. &c., on Healthy Man, constituting Elements of Hygiene. By Robley Dunglison, 
M.D., &c. &ce. 


*,* Persons in the pursuit of Health, as well as those who desire to retain it, would do well to examine 
this work, The Author states the work has beén prepared “* to enable the general reader to understand the 
nature of the actions of various influences on human health, and assist him in adopting such means as may 
tend to its preservation; hence the author has avoided introducing technicalities, except where they appeared 
to him indispensable,” 


be ne 


6 LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS, 


JUST ISSUED. 


SIBORNE’S WATERLOO GAMNIPAIGNS. 


WITH MAPS AND PLANS. 
HISTORY 


OF THE 


WAR IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM 
IN 1815; 


CONTAINING MINUTE DETAILS OF THE 
BATTLES OF QUATRE-BRAS, LIGNY, 
WAVRE, AND WATERLOO. 


BY 


CAPTAIN W. SIBORNE. 
In one Large Octavo Volume, extra cloth. 


WITH MAPS.AND PLANS OF THE BATTLES, &c., viz: 

. Part of Belgium, indicating the distribution of the armies on commencing hostilities. 
. Field of Quatre-Bras, at 3 o’clock, P. M. 
. Field of Quatre-Bras, at 7 o’clock, P. M. 
. Field of Ligny, at a quarter past 2 o’clock, P. M. 
. Field of Ligny, at half past 8 o’clock, P. M. 
. Field of Waterloo, at a quarter past 11 o’clock, A.M. 
. Field of Waterloo, at a quarter before 8 o’clock, P.M. 
. Field of Waterloo, at five minutes past 8 o’clock, P.M. 
. Field of Wavre, at 4 o’clock, P. M., 18th June. 

10. Field of Wavre, at 4 o’clock, A. M., 19th June. 

11. Part of France, on which is shown the advance of the Allied Armies into the Kingdom. 

«¢ When the work was first announced for publication we conceived great expectations from a 
history compiled by one whose access to every source of information was favoured both by interest 
in the highest quarters, and the circumstance of an official appointment on the staff. We looked 
for a work which should at once and forever set at rest the disputed questions of the campaign. 
We were not disappointed.’*—Dublin University Magazine. 

**'To Captain Siborne belongs the merit of having taken infinite pains to make himself master of 
his subject, and of stating his views both of events and of their consequences in a straightforward, 
manly, and soldier-like manner; his account of cavalry charges, especially in the affair of Quatre- 
Bras, the advance of columns, of cannonading, and the desultory sports of skirmishers, sweep you 
onwards as if the scene described were actually passing under your eyes. We now take our leave 
of Captain Siborne and his excellent work, thanking him, not only for the amusement which we 
have derived from his performance, but for the opportunity with which the appearance of a genuine 
English history of the battle of Waterloo supplies us of refuting some of the errors regarding it into 
which other historians had fallen.”°—Frazer’s Magazine. 

«Tn order to render the work complete, it is supplied with a great number of maps, repre- 
senting the field of battle at various hours of the day, so that the reader may have a constant refer- 
ence, by which to understand the new positions of the several commands, and the amount gained 
by the different armies. A part of the description of the battle is deeply interesting, from the exact- 
ness of the information, the close particulars of the sufferings, escapes, and courage of parties and 
individuals. The publishers deserve the thanks of general readers for such an addition to the means 
of correct knowledge, and the value of the library shelves, for we suppose no library will be with- 
out such an important work.”’—U. S. Gazette. 

«¢ The author by a most rigid investigation, and careful comparison of the testimony of nearly all 
the surviving eye witnesses of those events, has produced a book that may be considered of as much 
authority as anything that can be expected on this subject. It is hardly necessary to say, that it is 
full of the most exciting and thrilling details—and in reading it, one seems to be standing within 
hearing of the shouts of the conqueror, and the groans of the dying. It has passed quickly through 
two editions in England, and we predict for it an extensive circulation in this country.’’—Albany 
Atlas. 


WHIAMNP WOH 


Nearly Ready. 
A NEW WORK ON COURTS MARTIAL, 


A TREATISE ON AMERICAN MILITARY LAW, 


AND THE 


PRACTICE OF COURTS MARTIAL. 


WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT. 
BY JOHN O’BRIEN, Lreor. U.S. ArTILLEeRy. 
In one octavo volume. 


LEA & BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS, 17 


NOW READY. 
In four Beautiful Octavo Volumes, with a Portrait. 


-GRAHAME’S UNITED STATES. 
THE HISTORY 


OF THE 


UNITED STATES 


NORTH. AMERICA. 


FROM THE PLANTING OF THE BRITISH COLONIES TO THEIR REVOLT, 
AND DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


By JAMES GRAHAME, Esa. 


EDITED BY 


Presipent QUINCY, of Harvard College. 
WITH A PREFACE AND MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 


In four beautifully Printed Octavo Volumes, 
NEAT EXTRA CLOTH, 


With a Fine Portrait on Steel. 
PRICE EIGHT DOLLARS. 


James Grahame, for some years an advocate at the Scottish bar, devoted his life to the elu- 
cidation of American History. A Republican in principles and religion, he entered into the 
annals of the early seekers of liberty in this country, with an interest and partiality which 
have generally been thought impossible for a British subject. He was, itis believed, the first 
person in either country ‘who engaged systematically in the task of combining in one gene- 
ral work, all the elements which “belong to a complete history of the United States, from their 
first settlement, to the Declaration of Independence. In 1824, after some years spent in 
gathering materials, he commenced writing hishistory, In 1827, two volumes of it were issued, 
bringing it to the Revolution of 1688 ; and in 1836 the whole was published in four volumes, in 
a style at once costly and elegant. To this favourite subject he devoted himself with an ardour 
rarely equaled in the annals of literature. In order to procure materials before unused, he re- 
sided for some time in France and Germany, for the sole purpose of availing himself of the 
treasures illustrative of his theme, possessed by these countries, beyond the resources of 
public and private libraries of England, which he had previously exhausted. It can be rea- 
dily understood that a history like his, embracing republican views and opinions, and intensely 
American in feeling, met with little sympathy from the members of an established church 
and a constitutional monarchy. It was accordingly received by the literary arbiters of Eng- 
jJand with silence and coldness; and as no means were taken to make it known in this coun- 
try, it was equally disregarded. Nothing daunted, though disappointed, he applied himself 
to the revision and improvement of it, making many additions and alterations, from 1836 to 
1842, when he finally fell a victim to a disease long impending over him, and brought on 
by the ardour and devotion with which he gave himself up to his favourite pursuit. For 
some time before his death, his greatest desire was to have his work reproduced in this coun- 
try, with the hope that the measure of justice denied him at home might be accorded him by 
those to whom he had sacrificed his life and energies. With this view, after his death, his 
son transmitted | to Harvard College the MSS. and papers of Mr. Grahame, including the whole 
materials for a°new and improved edition; with a stipulation, that, if published, it should 
be in a form similar to the English edition. In pursuance with this request, President Quincy 
has kindly undertaken to edit this publication, assisted by the late Judge Story, Mr. Sparks, 
and other eminent men; he has added a most interesting memoir, containing extracts from 
his letters, journals and notes. A fine portrait on steel has been prepared, and the whole 
edition has been printed in a style to compare with the English copy. 

It is hoped that a work presenting such claims to the favour of all American citizens, 
will meet with ready encouragement. 


SCIENTIFIC PORTIONS OF THE EXPLORING EXPEDITION. 
L. & B. WILL SOON HAVE READY, 
The volume of Mr. Hare, embracing the PHILOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHI- 


CAL portions, in 1 vol. 4to. To be succeeded by Mr. Dana’s Volumes on Corals, in 
one volume quarto, and a folio volume of plates. 


= » ~ 
. 4 ¥ 


LEA & BLANCHARD’S PUBLICATIONS. " 


A NEW COOK BOOK. at 


JUST PUBLISHED 
ATOMS MODBBYX fa ed 


MODERN. COOKERY, 
IN ALL ITS BRANCHES, 


REDUCED TO A SYSTEM OF EASY PRACTICE: 


FOR THE USE OF PRIVATE FAMILIES, : 
IN A SERIES OF RECEIPTS, WHICH HAVE BEEN STRICTLY T ob. cia GIVEN} 
WITH THE MOST MINUTE EXACTNESS, 
By ELIZA ACTON. ‘i ie 
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS WOOD CU1 


TO WHICH ARE ADDED, 


DIRECTIONS FOR CARVING, GARNISHING, AND SETTING OUT THE TABLE: 


WITH A TABLE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, 
THE WHOLE REVISED AND PREPARED FOR AMERICAN HOUSEKEEPERS. 
BY MRS. §S. J. HALE, 


EDITOR OF *‘THE LADY’S BOOK,”’ ETC. ETC. 


FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. 


18 


—sz SSS 
= —SeessSS > 
a 


This work will be found or two receipts, which are 


to present one of the best 
systems, if not the very 
best, of MopERN cookery. 
With the exception of one 


results of her own experience. 


puticularly mentioned, 
the whole have been per- . 
sonally tried by the Au- 


thor, and are given as the 


One of the distinguishing features of the work, and one which will prove o. 


great convenience to those using it, is the summary of the quantities of each ingredient, and the times requisite 
for preparing them, appended to every receipt, thus saving the trouble of searching through the text. The 
numerous wood cuts with which it is embellished, representing utensils, new fashions for moulds and pastry, 
&c., as well as the ordinary directions for preparing meats, will be found greatly to elucidate the receipts. The 
name of the editor, Mrs. Saran J. HArg, is asufficient guaranty that the work has been well altered and adapted 
for American use. It is printed on fine paper, with clear type, and is well bound in fancy cloth, forming a very 


neat duodecimo volume of over four hundred large pages, containing about ELEVEN Hunprep RECEIPTS. 
It has been most favourably received by the press both in this country and in England, where it has passed 
through Turee Epirions in the course of a few months. 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 


Miss Eliza Acton may congratulate herself on having 
composed a work of great utility, and one that is speedily 
finding its way to every “dresser” in the kingdom. Her 
Cookery-book is unquestionably the most valuable com- 
pendium of the art that has yet been published. It strongly 
inculcates economical principles, and points out how good 
things may be concocted without that reckless extravagance 
which good cooks have been wont to imagine the best evi- 
dence they can give of skill in their profession. 

London Morning Post. 

The work before us strikes us as equal, if not superior, to 
any of its predecessors. Kitchener, in spite of its merits, 
which are not few or far between, is somewhat passé; Mrs, 
Rundle scarcely retains her elevated position: she was always 


. 


too recherchée; and an opening still existed for a scientific 
work on the “culinary art,’’? which was in all respects “up 
to the day.’? Such a work, we think, is Miss Acton’s; and 
accordingly we recommend it to the favourable notice of our 
readers.— Medical Examiner. 

The arrangement adopted by Miss Acton is excellent. 
She has trusted nothing to others. She has proved all she 
has written by personal inspection and experiment. The 
novel feature of her book, which will greatly facilitate the 
labours of the kitchen, is the summary appended to each 
recipe of the materials which it contains, with the exact pro- 
portion of every ingredient and the precise time required to 
dress the whole.—London Allas. 


7 ees 
LEA & ‘BLANCHARD PUBLICATIONS. 19 
fhe in Acton’s Modern Cookery—Continued. 


‘* Aware of our own incompetency to pro- 
nounce upon the claims of this volume to the 
confidence ofthose mostyinterested in its con- 
tents, we submitte it to more than one professor 
of the art of cookery. The report made to us is 
more than favourable. We are assured that Miss 
Acton’s instructions may be safely followed; her 
receipts are distinguished for excellence. "The 
dishes prepared acco to Miss Acton’s direc- 
tions—all et! lls us, have been tested 
and approved—will give satisfa ction ‘by their de- 
licacy, and wil e found economical in price as 
well as delicious in flavour. With such attesta- 
tions to its superior worth, there is no doubt that 
the volume will be purchased and consulted by 
the domestic authorities of eyery family in which 
good cookery, combined with rigid economy, is 
an object of interest.”>—Globe. 

*° This very complete manual of domestic cook- 
ery will be found of high value to all classes. It 
contains a very large amount of useful informa- 
tion adapted to the kitchens of persons in all 
grades of life. We have, after a careful exami- 
nation of Miss Acton’s work, come to the con- 
clusion that, as far as our knowledge of cookery- 
books extends, hers is the most perfect compen- 
dium, or rather cyclopedia, of the art of modern 
cookery ever yet offered to the public.”— Weekly 
Dispatch. 

‘*This is an excellently arranged work, and 
one that cannot fail to be valuable to all persons 
desirous of acquiring a practical knowledge of 
kitchen economy. It contains many hundred re- 
cipes relating to every branch of domestic cook- 
ery and confectionary, and all written in so clear 
and plain a manner that the most inexperienced 
person can follow the instructions that are given. 
The quantity of any article necessary for any of 
these recipes, as well as the time required for 
their preparation, is so exactly laid down, that 
the mistress of a family can tell at once both the 
trouble and expense that any dish will occasion. 
This isa great improvement upon any other work 
of the kind we remember to have seen. The 
authoress dedicates her book to the young house- 
keepers of England, and we think she has ren- 
dered them most essential service by its publica- 
tion. Many of the recipes are both new and 
elegant, while they can be prepared at compara- 
tively trifling expense.?*—Britannia, 


‘¢ We find many recipes in it, which to our 
taste are excellent. Miss A. teaches the cookery 
of an oyster like a native, and her chapters on 
soups are savoury in their very reading. The 
great advantage of this work, is that it teaches 
economical cookery, as well as the most sumptu- 
ous—from the soup maigre of France to thé 
magnificent roast fillet of beef. »»— Philadelphia 
Gazette. 

‘*Jt can hardly happen in the nature of things, 
but that this will prove to be a popular book.— 
The reason is, that all sorts of people like good 
living ; and this work falls in most admirably with 
the universal appetite. We perceive that it is 
full of receipts for making all manner of good 
things, and every house-wife will of course want 
it, as an important, not to say indispensable, do- 
mestic auxiliary.”°—Albany Citizen. 

‘¢ This work is immensely popular in England 
—and will be here. Inthe first place there is so 
much of it that the busiest housekeeper could not 
cook throughin a lifetime. In the next, and this 
is a most excellent characteristic, it is adapted 
for small families,as well as large; and all styles 
and descriptions of culinary art get their share, 
It is a true eclectic in cookery. What delicacies 
the unhappy English do not get—Indian corn, 
buckwheat, terrapins, canvass backs, &c., &c., 
have been supplied by the American editor.??— 
Saturday Post. 

‘‘ This handsome volume, of some 400 pages, 
must be a perfect treasure to every housekeeper. 
It contains recipes, clearly written, founded on 
experiment, and easily followed—for preparing 
and cooking every dish that the ingenuity of man 
hath yet devised, and has been scrupulously and 
admirably adapted to the circumstances and tastes 
of the great body of persons into whose hands it 
will be likely to fall. It has already passed 
through two editions in England, where it is pro- 
nounced by the best judges to be by far the best 
work ever prepared upon this subject. The di- 
rections in all cases, are given with great minute- 
ness ; they are illustrated, when this is necessary, 
by wood-cuts, and to each recipe is appended a 
summary of the materials which it contains, with 
the exact proportion of each ingredient, and the 
precise time required to dress the whole.””—N. 
Y. Courier and Enquirer. 


THOMSON ON THE SICK ROOM, 


THE DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT OF THE SICK ROOM, NECESSARY, IN AID 
OF MEDICAL TREATMENT, FOR THE CURE OF DISEASES. 
BY A. T. THOMSON, M.D., &c., &c. 


FIRST AMERICAN, 


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Epitep sy R. E. GRIFFITH, M.D. 
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CONDIE ON CHILDREN. 
A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE DISEASES OF CHILDREN, 


By D. FRANCIS CONDIE, 


M.D. 


Fellow of the College of Physicians; Member of the ARAN Philosophical Society, &c, &c. 
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*¢ The previous historical works of Miss Strickland, her zeal, impartiality, industry, and her chi- 
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7 2s x 
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YOUATT AND SKINNER’S STANDARD WORK ON THE HORSE 


 . THE HORSE. 


BY WILLIAM YOUATT. — . 
A NEW EDITION, WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 


TOGETHER WITH A 


GENERAL HISTORY OF THE HORSE; 


A DISSERTATION ON 
THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE; 
HOW TRAINED AND JOCKEYED. 
AN ACCOUNT OF HIS REMARKABLE PERFORMANCES; 


AND 


AN ESSAY ON THE ASS AND THE MULE, 
BY J. S. SKINNER, 


Assistant Post Master General, aud Editor of the Turf Register. 


This edition of Youatt’s well known and standard work on the Management, Diseases, and 
Treatment of the Horse, has already obtained such a wide circulation throughout the country, that 
the Publishers need say nothing to attract to it the attention and confidence of all who keep Horses 
or are interested in their improvement. 

*<In introducing this very neat edition of Youatt?s well known book, on ‘* The Horse,” to our 
readers, it is not necessary, even if we had time, to say anything to convince them of its worth; it 
has been highly spoken of, by those most capable of appreciating its merits, and its appearance 
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at its head, affords a full guaranty for its high character. The book is a very valuable one, and we 
endorse the recommendation of the editor, that every man who owns the * hair of a horse,’ should 
have it at his elbow, to be consulted like a family physician, ‘ for mitigating the disorders, and pro- 
longing the life of the most interesting and useful of all domestic animals.’ **—Farmer’s Cabinet. 

«This celebrated work has been completely revised, and much of it almost entirely re-written 
by its able author, who, from being a practical veterinary surgeon, and withal a great lover and 
excellent judge of the animal, is particularly well qualified to write the history of the noblest of 
quadrupeds. Messrs. Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia have republished the above work, omitting 
a few of the first pages, and have supplied their place with matter quite as yaluable, and perhaps 
more interesting to the reader in this country: it being nearly 100 pages of a general history of the 
horse, a dissertation on the American trotting horse, how trained and jockeyed, an account of his 
remarkable performances, and an essay on the Ass and Mule, by J. S. Skinner, Esq., Assistant Post- 
master General, and late editor of the Turf Register and American Farmer. Mr. Skinner is one 
of our most pleasing writers, and has been familiar with the subject of the horse from childhood, 
and we need not add that he has acquitted himself well of the task. He also takes up the import- 
ant subject, to the American breeder, of the Ass, and the Mule. This he treats at length and con 
amore. ‘The Philadelphia edition of the Horse is a handsome octavo, with numerous wood cuts.*— 
American Agriculturist. 

‘< One of the most useful books which the impulse given to agricultural knowledge within a few 
years, has produced, is the work on ‘The Horse,’ by Youatt. Since its publication in 1831, its 
sale has been great and constant, and its circulationconsiderable even in the United States. A new 
edition was lately published in London, and this we are happy to say, has been re-published by Lea 
& Blanchard, in a beautiful style; and at a cheap rate. But the principal additional value of this 
new American edition, is a thorough revision to adapt it the more exactly to the circumstances of 
this country, and a most valuable introduction, by J. S. Skinner, well known for his labours in the 
cause of agriculture, and editor of the Turf Register. The introduction shows Mr. Skinner to be 
a thorough master of his subject, and the mass of information he has brought together on the his- 
tory of the horse, the improvement, character, and performances of that noble animal, is such as 
could have been collected only by one who understood and appreciated the subject of which he 
was treating. He has also added a valuable essay onthe Ass and the Mule. The improvement of 
animals, or the science of crosses, we consider as but in comparative infancy; and we hail with 
pleasure a work like the ‘Introduction,’ calculated still farther to adyance this great interest. We 
thank Mr. Skinner for this volume, and the labour he has bestowed upon it; it will prove a most 


acceptable present, we cannot doubt, to the public, and should be in the hands of every one who 
keeps a horse.*»— Albany Cultivator. 


Se 


L. & B. WILL PUBLISH, 


THE DOG. 


BY WILLIAM YOUATT. 
IN ONE VOLUME. WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 


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